Psychobyte

by Cat Connor

  “Think so, but to be sure I need to talk to Petrovovich.”

  “Do it now, we’ve got a crime scene to get to and if you want to revisit Jane’s place, we might have to make that after your appointment.”

  Fair enough. Maybe not the best day to have an appointment with a specialist. Timing. Sucking. Again.

  I sat back at my desk and called Petrovovich.

  “It’s Ellie Conway.” I didn’t wait for him to speak. “There’s a scent I couldn’t place. It didn’t register. A musky wet earth smell, really faint, inside a clothes hamper.”

  “Patchouli,” he said without hesitation. “I smelled it too. It’s in my report.”

  “Thank you. I needed you to confirm what I thought.”

  “You’re welcome. My report will be with you within the hour.”

  “Thank you for your help.” I hung up and turned to Kurt. “He said patchouli.”

  “Then we should get there as soon as we can and see if we can find the poem.”

  “Yep. Also, Sandra is asking Matthew Collins to come back in. If Jane was in an abusive relationship in the past, he might know about it.”

  “What about her parents? Or the guy who carpooled with her?” Kurt asked.

  I didn’t feel her parents held anything back when they talked about Jane. Possibly she’d hidden it from them.

  “I’ll talk to her parents again when I get a chance, if I need to. I’m not keen on telling them something that’ll hurt them more now. She’d dead, that’s bad enough.”

  Kurt stood by my desk. “Support groups. We need to revisit that list and look for support groups for victims of violent crime including rape, and groups for people with post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “Yes, we do. I think we’ll find they all have some kind of abuse in their pasts … the houses are so very clean. It’s a control thing, isn’t it?”

  “Can be.”

  “In this case?”

  “It’s possible, Conway. Even though none of the background checks turned up police reports regarding violence, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Rape is still way under-reported.”

  Something horrible jumped into my mind. Yes, rape is an under-reported crime. Could a cop be running a support group and if so, how would women hear about it, if they weren’t reporting the crimes?

  Because they did report the rape but it never went any further.

  Why? The complaint would still be in the system.

  Troy Fallon.

  “Fallon is homicide now, but what did she do before?” I wasn’t really asking, just thinking aloud while I checked out her service record. I went back seven years and found a brief stint with the Special Victims Unit at Fairfax PD. “Kurt, Fallon was seconded to special victims for six months early in her detective career, to cover maternity leave. She requested to go back to homicide after the six months.”

  “Another nail in her coffin.”

  Yep.

  “I want her case files. I want to know exactly what she did over there.”

  “I’ll get Sandra to get everything for you. You get ready, we have to go.”

  Crime scene time.

  Thirty-Five

  Save A Prayer

  Another bathroom.

  Another clean house.

  Another drained blonde.

  Another reason not to shower.

  Jodie Norris, twenty-eight, administrator at the Crime Museum.

  “Let me do this,” I said to Kurt. “Jodie and I need to have a talk.”

  “Yeah, sure, that’s probably the creepiest thing you’ve ever said. I’ll be right here.” He stepped into the open doorway. “In case she reanimates and has a sudden craving for fresh brains.”

  A smile crossed my lips. Good thinking. Trust no one, not even the dead. I looked around the room before crouching down next to the shower and Jodie.

  “Okay Jodie, this is the thing … you’re dead and I need you to show me what happened, right before you died.”

  Nothing happened. I waited. Jodie remained inert. No incorporeal arms moved. Nothing.

  Not helpful. From my position, I easily saw a small square of white paper tucked behind a large potted fern on the floor. I retrieved it and read aloud, “‘Trapped behind the line.’”

  Kurt came forward with an evidence bag for the note.

  “Jodie’s not talking,” I said with a sigh.

  Felt like a fail on my part. Maybe she didn’t like me. Perhaps she had already left the building. A sudden rise in my body temperature took me by surprise. Bile swirled in my gut, saliva pooled. I swallowed hard.

  “Conway?” Kurt’s tone expressed concern. “Looking a bit flushed. All right?”

  I wanted to nod but my head shook.

  Traitor.

  My vision clouded. A female voice grew stronger as it came closer. From the corner of my eye, I saw shadowy movement. Jodie? The voice told me it was. I could feel her. Cold fingers dug into my back and pulled my flesh apart. The cold climbed inside filling every crevice and organ with trepidation. Jodie walked me through her morning. She got up early, didn’t make coffee because coffee makes her ill.

  God.

  Images of Jodie throwing up filled my mind.

  That was too much for me. Dizziness hit like a sledgehammer.

  Nothing.

  No Jodie. No bathroom. No noise.

  *

  Next thing, Mitch’s blue eyes hovered above me. Pretty clever. How’d he do that?

  “You in there, El?”

  “What if I say no?” I replied, with a groan. Pain radiated from the left side of my head. “Jodie …”

  Someone touched my wrist. I couldn’t turn my head, it hurt. My eyes wouldn’t focus.

  “What about Jodie?”

  I knew that voice. Kurt.

  “She was pregnant,” I said, letting the pain in my head take over and push me back into the dark.

  I thought I heard Kurt say, “So were you.”

  Thirty-Six

  Was I Wrong?

  Background noises grew louder and more insistent as the black lifted, revealing soft light and deep gray shadows. I didn’t want to move. There seemed little point trying. I didn’t need to open my eyes to recognize the familiar smells associated with a hospital which assailed me. A deep sadness rolled over me like a fleecy blanket.

  The nothingness seemed preferable to reality but I couldn’t get back there. I emptied my mind and waited.

  A screen appeared. Mitch’s name and his picture sat above the green call button. I pressed the button. His voice filled my ears. Not my head. It took me a minute to figure it out.

  “Open your eyes, babe.”

  I don’t want to.

  I don’t want to.

  “Sleepy.”

  “I know. For me, okay? Open your eyes. I need to know you’re okay.” Pressure on my hand. Warmth spread as Mitch’s fingers closed around mine. “Please, El.”

  I don’t want to.

  Drifting into the dark felt better than moving closer to the light. It wasn’t fair of me. Life didn’t feel very fair. I could justify the hell out of anything in the dark. The noises softened, fading until the nothing swallowed them all.

  I breathed. The dark lightened to cream. Heavy black outlines drawn in Sharpie emerged on the cream. A paint box sat on an outlined desk. Watching a brush move and color the scene fascinated me. I recognized the glass partitions and the leather chairs before I saw Chance sitting at his desk. He looked up from his screen. His lips set in a straight line. Uncharacteristic; he always smiled when he saw me.

  “You should sit down, Ellie,” he said, motioning to a chair. “I’ll be right with you.”

  The chair was comfortable. The leather soft. “Why am I here?” I took note of the spacious office and the lack of noise. A silent office. Strange.

  “You don’t know?” Chance said, putting down the papers in his hand.

  “No.”

  “They can’t get through to you.”


  “Who can’t?”

  Chance moved the screen on his desk so I could see what he’d been watching. Mitch sitting next to a hospital bed. Kurt pacing the room.

  “Mitch and Kurt, Ellie. They can’t get through to you. You’re not responding.”

  “Am I dead?”

  He shook his head. “No. You just don’t want to wake up.”

  “Then why am I here?” I sighed.

  “Because you have to wake up. Delta can’t close the case … you still hold information in your head that they don’t know. Without it and you, no one will make the connection between Fallon and Stevens or Fallon and the victims.”

  “Of course they will.”

  Chance’s eyes hardened. “They won’t. You hold the key. Get your shit together and wake up.”

  “I don’t know who Unsub One is … I don’t know why Jodie had cloudy vision when she wasn’t drugged.”

  “She was drugged, just not with lorazepam. Think outside the square. That second Unsub isn’t Greek like the first one, Ellie, he’s an Eastern European.”

  I felt my forehead tense. I ran through countries I thought were Eastern European. Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Russian Federation, Moldavia, Latvia. I’m sure I missed some and none felt like it fitted.

  “That doesn’t help me. I don’t know anything.”

  Chance’s hands flattened on the desk, he pushed himself to his feet and moved toward me.

  “Unsub One, Ellie. You know who he is. Think about it. Think about Hank. You know this.”

  I wanted the dark back.

  Thinking about Hank was not something I wanted to do, it ranked way up there with waking up. Hank had been in prison too long for this to be coming from him. He didn’t kill these women. I saw a band saw dripping with blood and meat.

  “This isn’t helping me, Chance.”

  “It will. Think, Ellie. Think about Hank and his visitors. Find out who is hanging out with him.”

  No! There is no obvious link between Hank and this case. The women weren’t turned into human jigsaw puzzles: they were drained of most of their blood.

  No amount of thinking gave me a connection between the crimes under investigation and Hank.

  “There’s no link …”

  Chance shook his head. “Think, Ellie.”

  “I am thinking.”

  When did Chance become such a nag?

  I slumped in the chair and let the case notes scroll through my mind, comparing the new investigation with Hank’s messy pastimes. The one similarity: unconscious victims. Hank favored fentanyl.

  “Fentanyl spray. Hank used Fentanyl spray to knock out his victims.” I gave it a minute to let that thought work through to a conclusion. A light went on. “Fentanyl spray is a Russian invention.”

  Chance winked. “I think you’re starting to see …”

  “But we never found the source of the fentanyl.”

  “Check the prison logs. You’ll find it and when you do, you’ll find Unsub Two.”

  “Two?” No, he said I’d know who Unsub One was if I thought about Hank. “What about One?”

  “Keep thinking, Ellie. It’s right there …”

  How did Hank get a letter delivered to my house? How did he get a letter out of a prison and to my house? Someone smuggled it out? Who could get close enough to a maximum security prisoner to do that? A lawyer or a family member. I doubted a lawyer would risk losing their job doing something that stupid.

  “Crap! Hank is related to someone within this case …” The thought meandered around in my head looking for something to latch onto.

  “Got it yet?” Chance asked leaning closer to me.

  I shook my head. The thought sloshed from side to side and spilled over the edges of my brain. Thoughts dripped like clocks in a Salvador Dali painting. Clocks. Time. Melting. I looked closer at the faces of the melting clocks. I didn’t get it. Felt like everything hinged on time. Time. A headline oozed over two of the clocks. Not time but The Times. As I watched, the headline morphed into a letter posted in a mailbox. Times. Post. Journalist.

  Rosanne Lette.

  A door crashed into its frame, shaking the images around me. Walls ran. Colors merged. Puddles formed. Clocks slid to the floor taking all the images of Hank’s destruction with them. A pool of frothy red formed at my feet.

  Crap! No wonder she doesn’t talk much about her son. Her son’s father is Hank. Kristopher delivered the letter. That’s the reason Rosanne broke into my home. She wanted to know if I knew about Hank. Oh, man!

  “Ellie?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You got it?”

  “Kristopher Lette is Hank’s son.”

  Which is great n’all but he’s not the guy I saw. He’s not one of the Unsubs.

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn’t help me narrow down the Unsub any, Chance.”

  “Come on, Ellie, use that brain of yours … it’s not rocket science.”

  Wiseass.

  Maybe it is rocket science. What did I know? Unsub One was directly linked to Jane Daughtry. Possibly an abusive ex. According to Chance, Unsub Two was a Russian with a link to Hank.

  I’d missed something.

  What happened at the last crime scene?

  What didn’t I want to see?

  “Chance?”

  “You have to look, Ellie. I know you don’t want to. You have to.” His voice soft, firm but soft. Whatever I didn’t want to see was bad. He only ever used that tone for bad shit.

  I sank further into the chair and let myself be transported back to the crime scene and Jodie Norris. This time, I walked in the door and focused on Jodie. I saw her blonde hair hanging over the side of the bathtub. I moved the shower curtain back so I could see the rest of Jodie, aware that I’d only seen her face before. Her torso displayed stab wounds. Her arms and legs bore a few slashes. A long incision across her lower abdomen.

  The fetus lay in the bath near her. No blood anywhere.

  Both mother and baby drained.

  “How old was it?” I asked looking into Chance’s eyes then back at the baby. “She, how old was she?”

  “Seventeen point four weeks. Look closer at the baby.”

  I zoomed in on the image. The cord was torn.

  “Baby bled out just like Jodie.” Chance nodded. “Ripping a fetus from a uterus is different from stabbing women and taking perfume or body wash.”

  “Yeah,” Chance replied. “Ya gotta wonder about someone who could do that sort of damage to two human beings.”

  “This is the Russian’s handiwork?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s escalated.” Those words sat there for a second before they were followed by my next question. “How would he have known about the pregnancy?”

  Chance smiled a knowing smile and said nothing. Not helping. I had to admit he’d been pretty helpful so far.

  He looked at me and grinned. “How do you like me so far?”

  I shook my head. “Really? You’re still going there with mixing television series?”

  “Could be worse.”

  True.

  “Thanks for choosing a series I liked.” Chance morphed into Keen Eddie then back to Chance. “Was that fun for you?”

  His dimples deepened as he grinned. “Yeah.”

  “Not helping.”

  “Ah, but I am.”

  Yeah, he actually was.

  His tone changed, less playful, more serious. “You have to go back, Ellie. You need to get this case closed, they need you.”

  “They—”

  “Delta and Mitch. They. Need. You.”

  “But—”

  “It’s not what you think, Ellie. It’s okay to go back.”

  The room shimmered like an oasis in the desert. Sparkling like sand on a hot day. Chance blurred. Now what?

  Someone picked up my world and shook it. Life became a snow globe full of glitter. A voice broke through the sparkles. As the clouds of silve
r glitter cleared, Mitch came into focus.

  He looked upset. My doing, I supposed. Didn’t make me feel good at all. Another tick in the box marked fail. I couldn’t quite get why he wanted to marry me. That wasn’t helpful thinking either. I had enough clues not to say that aloud.

  I hoped.

  “You’re back.” The relieved timbre in Mitch’s voice tugged at my heart. “Can you open your eyes?”

  I did as he asked. Light bounced from all angles, firing spiky lightning bolts into my eyes. I winced.

  “The light,” Mitch said and the brightness dimmed to a much more manageable level.

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “Don’t mention it,” he replied. “You’ve been out awhile, El. We were getting jumpy.”

  We?

  “We who?”

  Dad. Of course. That made sense. Where else would he be? Home with his crazy lady friend and the potential serial killer of a son.

  That could be awkward if she didn’t die and they got married. A serial-killing stepbrother would not make me a favorite in the hallowed halls of the FBI. Bad enough that my cases were used at the academy and not always as shining examples of how clever we were!

  “You okay there, kid?” Dad said, stooping down and kissing my forehead.

  “I’m good, Dad, don’t know what the fuss is all about.”

  Not even being facetious, I really didn’t know.

  Dad chuckled. “Never known you to be anything other than good. One day perhaps you’ll acknowledge things could be better.”

  Mitch laughed softly. “Then I’ll really worry,” he said, squeezing my fingers under his.

  “Where’s Kurt?” I asked, sitting up a bit and regretting the movement. My head swam.

  “I’m here,” he said from the other side of my bed.

  He didn’t sound happy. I didn’t want to ask what had happened. I launched into a list of things I needed him to check on regarding the case. Everything Chance told me or I remembered. Kurt wrote without comment until I stopped talking.

  “We’re looking for a Russian, yes?”

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “A Russian who has a connection to Hank.”

  “And Rosanne Lette’s son is Hank’s son too?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can prove all of this?”

  “No.”

  He rolled his eyes.