That couldn’t be. Nicole looked down at her watch. It had been nearly an hour. Ruben must be going ballistic by now, wondering why she wasn’t in the interrogation with him. She looked down to her phone to find two missed calls and four texts from her partner. How had she missed them?
“That’s it, I’ve got to get back.”
“I’ll drive,” the profiler said as he stood up.
It wasn’t until then that Nicole realized that she did need a ride. Ruben had taken the car, and by now all the patrol cars would be gone. She didn’t have time to argue. The sooner she got back to the station, the better.
Harbinger led them out of the internet café and to a dark brown SUV. He unlocked the door with a click of the remote. Nicole climbed in, getting seated and snapping her seat belt closed. To her surprise, the profiler turned on the ignition and pulled out into traffic without any hesitation. She half expected him to stall or tell her they had a stop to make.
Certainly he wasn’t giving her a ride out of the goodness of his heart. She’d only known him for a few hours, but that just didn’t seem to be how he operated. But they were making a beeline for the precinct, so she couldn’t complain. Well, maybe she could complain. The interior of the car smell like…cigar. Didn’t the rental car company clean it out between drivers? Harbinger didn’t strike her as the type to smoke, especially not cigars.
Then she noticed the parking permit swinging gently from the rearview mirror. A permit for the morgue’s parking lot.
“This is Dr. McGregor’s SUV!”
“I figured at some point we would need a set of wheels,” the profiler calmly explained.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Nicole knew that panicking wasn’t going to help keep away the wrath that would rain down upon her from the Medical Examiner, but her panic was well warranted.
“We’ve got to return it. Now,” Nicole emphasized.
“All in due time,” Harbinger answered, leaning his elbow against the open window frame.
“No,” Nicole snapped. “You don’t understand.”
But the profiler smiled. “Oh, but I think I do.” Then he winked.
What had she gotten herself into?
CHAPTER 3
Ruben checked the clock. Again. Nicole was never late. His partner had a metronome in her head. If a waiter said the entrée would be out in five minutes, Nicole would not have to look at her watch to advise him if he were a moment overdue. Ruben even questioned why she even wore a watch in the first place.
“Yes, detective,” the lawyer who sat across from him said. “We’ve all got other things we would like to be doing.”
No doubt they did. Ruben returned his focus to the suspect sitting across from him. At first glance, you wouldn’t take him for a serial killer. The anatomy professor looked like, well, an anatomy professor. He had the air of a professional nerd. Black-rimmed glasses and all.
However, if he were so innocent, why was he always so cagey during his interrogations? Ruben had flagged him months ago, after the initial round of interviews. The man never answered a question directly. And his lawyer was no help.
Levinson closed his briefcase. “If we are done, my client would like to go home to his wife, who, I might remind you, has already given him an alibi for last night.”
Ruben had hoped to wait for Nicole before really getting into the meat of the interrogation. Her presence seemed to fluster the professor. However, he couldn’t wait any longer.
Slowly, he opened the folder with the latest crime scene photographs. “Look familiar?”
As always, the professor shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose and studied the dissected bodies. His eyes coursed over the organs as his lips moved without sound. Carefully, he lined the pictures up. The head at the top. The chest area next, then the abdomen. Finally, the pelvis and legs.
“I would have used more sharp dissection than blunt. It creates a better distinction between the muscle groups.”
Ruben had to constrict his throat as bile threatened. “She was alive when this was done to her.”
The professor looked up, frowning. “And for that I am sorry, but I had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you know how most people react when they see something like this?” Ruben asked, then answered his own question. “They are horrified. Revolted.”
Munz went to answer, but his lawyer laid a hand on his arm and spoke instead. “Unless the legal code has changed since we’ve been in here, being an outlier is not a crime.”
Ruben knew he was losing this round. Soon, very soon, Munz’s lawyer was going to insist that they either charge his client or let him go. Ruben could, of course, reveal that fact that they had surveillance on Munz which could break his wife’s alibi. But Ruben wanted to hold that back. Let Munz and his lawyer believe that they had nothing on the professor. All the better when they finally caught Munz in the act.
“So, as I said, I think this interview is—”
The lawyer’s words were cut off as Nicole rushing in. She mouthed “sorry” as she closed the door. Ruben noted that Munz sat straighter in his chair, his shoulders back like an English schoolboy.
“Detective Usher,” the lawyer said with a nod. If Ruben wasn’t mistaken, the guy actually thought he had a chance with Nicole. Like she’d ever go out with a defense attorney.
“Mr. Levinson,” Nicole answered as she sat down.
“Fashionably late?” the lawyer asked. “Or did you find some exculpatory evidence for my client?”
When she didn’t answer, Ruben looked to her. Nicole wouldn’t meet his eyes, but she did push his notepad and pen toward him. Weird. He didn’t think he’d given them to her.
Levinson’s eyes darted between them. “Something I should be aware of?”
“No,” Ruben stated. “But I would like to know your client’s exact movements last night.”
The lawyer sighed. “You do tape these interviews, correct? And since you already have him explaining that he was home all night with his wife about three times, I think you can just make a loop of it and we’ll never have to come in again.”
“How about one more time,” Ruben suggested. If he could just trip Munz up, he wouldn’t have to reveal the surveillance.
“As much as I would love”—Levinson emphasized the “love” as he nodded to Nicole—”to continue this conversation, my client pays me by the hour, and it would simply be highway robbery to go over it all again.” There wasn’t much Ruben could do as the lawyer rose, urging his client up. “So I think we are going to call it a night.”
* * *
Nicole watched as the two pushed their chairs back, getting ready to leave. She should have been here. But, really, would it have made much of a difference? Ruben was so certain that the killer was Munz, but after Harbinger’s demonstration, she wasn’t so sure. Her partner had no theory on how Munz would have met and seduced all of the victims. And the professor had always seemed so…obvious.
Yes, in common crimes it usually was the most obvious suspect. A wife turns up dead, you look to the husband. A child? You look to the parents.
But this crime was anything but common. So an anatomy professor being The Anatomy Professor seemed so out of character for the killer who went to such great length to cover his tracks.
The more time they spent on Munz, the less time they spent on finding the real killer. They needed to rule him in or out, like right now.
“Just tell us, professor,” Nicole said before she realized she was going to speak. “Tell us the truth so we can move on.”
Everyone turned to her. Ruben’s eyes questioning what the hell she was doing. Nicole’s gaze sought the two-way mirror, picturing the profiler standing behind it, watching her, judging her, urging her to get this over with.
“I have told you the truth,” Munz said. Did his words sound as hollow to him as they did to her?
“We have you under surveillance,” Nicole blurted as Ruben’s eyes dilated. She knew t
hey wanted to keep that a secret, but why, if Munz wasn’t the killer? Nicole was pretty damned sure she knew what the professor was hiding. Well, she knew if Harbinger had been at all correct in his assessment. “And you weren’t home with your wife.”
The lawyer seemed concerned, looking to his client. “I wouldn’t say anything, Dr. Munz.” He urged his client to the door, but Nicole stepped in front of them.
“I get it that you want to keep your…activities private,” Nicole sympathized. “But people are dying. Your secret pales in comparison to another person being dissected alive.” Munz refused to look her in the eye. “I know you don’t want that.”
Ruben put a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe we should let them go and bring the professor back in when—”
“Or, you could tell us right now what you were doing last night.” Nicole shrugged off her partner’s restraint. “Your wife has perjured herself, Dr. Munz. We can prosecute her for that.” The professor finally looked up. She’d found the chink in his armor. His wife. “She knows, doesn’t she?”
Munz’s lips pursed together. Nicole was close, but not correct. “She suspects, then?”
“What are you talking about?” Levinson asked.
“Yes,” her partner added tersely. “What exactly are you implying?”
The professor knew, though. Nicole could tell, as his eyelid twitched and his hand trembled against his pant leg.
“I have the right not to incriminate myself.”
Nicole couldn’t allow the smile she felt inside to reach her lips. She still needed him to confess to his actual crime. “We aren’t interested in prosecuting you, Dr. Munz. But we do need you to tell us what you were doing last night.”
Still, the man seemed hesitant. She had to find something else to apply the right pressure to break the seal of shame. “My guess is that you disabled the cameras in the anatomy lab, but did you remember to turn off the ones in the hallways? The ones that will show your repeated after-hours trips to the lab?”
By the way his lips clamped down, she guessed not. “And are you absolutely certain we won’t find biologicals, your biologicals, on the cadavers?”
“It’s a victimless crime,” Munz blurted out.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Levinson intervened. “How about my client and I confer before—”
Nicole stepped around the lawyer. “What is, Dr. Munz? What have you been doing in that lab? At night? By yourself?”
“They don’t want anything. They don’t have expectations,” the professor stammered out. “They don’t fight.”
“Dear God,” Ruben whispered. “You’re a necrophiliac.”
Munz turned on his heel. “We prefer the term daisy pusher.”
Nicole didn’t have to hear anything more. The professor was a pervert, but he wasn’t their perp. She made for the door.
“Where are you going?” Ruben asked.
“To search for the actual killer,” Nicole stated, then left the room. As the door shut, her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the hallway. She found her captain standing at the observation window. Nicole glanced around, but he was the only one there.
“What the hell was that about, Usher?” Captain Glick demanded.
“Where’s FBI Special Agent Harbinger?”
Captain Glick frowned. “What Special Agent?”
“The one you called in to help with the case?”
Glick shook his head. “I didn’t call in any FBI agent. And back to why you—”
A laugh erupted before Nicole could stop it. Harbinger wasn’t even on official duty, yet was closer to solving the case then they had come in months. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve got to follow up a lead.”
“Without Torres?”
Definitely without her partner.
* * *
Kent sat at a corner table in the back of the Decadence Café. He blew on his hot chocolate, causing the whipped cream to tremble and dance across the dark surface. Everyone else around him was drinking an iced tea, or iced latte, or iced something aruther. Given the fact that it was ten o’clock at night and still ninety degrees with one hundred percent humidity, Kent didn’t blame them.
However, he found the warmer it was outside, the warmer he liked his drink. Call him a contrarian that way.
As he waited for his hot chocolate to cool just below scalding temperatures, Kent studied those around him. More than half of the patrons he and Nicole had lured here. You could tell them from their furtive glances and barely contained excitement and shame. He had made sure to tell each of them to order something different, with a twist.
Never before had café-goers been so interested in what everyone else was eating. Who would be brave enough to get up and introduce themselves to their supposed blind date? Kent had certainly manipulated each of them, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t tried to match each of them with someone compatible. It felt like it was his civic duty.
He might be a puppet master, but he liked to think of himself as a benevolent one. Well, perhaps not benevolent, but at the least indulgent. The café door opened to reveal a petite brunette with a badge on her hip. Once again, he pulled a string, and look who followed.
Nicole spotted him and headed straight over. “Special Agent Harbinger.”
“Please,” he said, indicating to the chair across from him. “Once you’ve seduced together, I believe you should be on a first-name basis.”
“Kent, then,” Nicole said as she sat down. “You weren’t called in.”
Leaning back, Kent took a sip of the hot chocolate. The barista had been right. That shot of spearmint really did liven up the drink. “I never said I was.” Off of her frown, he continued. “Your paramour was the one that ousted me as a profiler. I was simply observing.”
She cocked her head. Both of them knew there was nothing simple about his presence here, but she didn’t push it.
“So how was it?” Kent asked.
Nicole shrugged. “It’s good that we’ve eliminated Munz and can move on.”
“That’s not what I asked though, is it?” he pointed out.
The detective shifted in her seat, her fingers playing with an empty sugar packet. “I could…” she stopped, then started again. “It was like I could sense his internal resistance, then the cracking of his composure. Not in a psychic way, just in a…” Nicole pointed to her midline, “Physical way.”
Kent knew exactly what she was describing. Most cops called it their gut, but really it was a complex set of visual and auditory clues, filtered and sorted by the brain, before the autonomic system sent the message down to the belly. There was very little instinct about it. For the most part, it was a learned craft that could be cultivated if one wished and was willing to risk opening themselves up to it.
“Again, not what I asked.”
Nicole let the packet go. “It felt pretty damned good.”
Kent grinned. That’s what he’d thought. “And what do you think of our handiwork?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look around,” Kent said. “Recognize anyone?”
Nicole turned in her seat, surveying the room. “I don’t —” She stopped herself, then swung back to him. “No. They can’t be.”
“Oh, but they are,” Kent said, then took another sip. “Can you guess who’s who?”
A smile flickered at the edge of her lips as she studied those around her. She pointed to the chubbiest of the bunch. “Chastity4U?”
“Very good,” he purred. “And MelissaOTK?”
Nicole nodded toward a redhead wearing a dark purple bustier.
“Now, knowing what you do,” Kent stated, “reimagine your profile of the killer.”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “He certainly has far more social skills than we had anticipated.”
“Online,” Kent reminded her. “That is a whole other set of skills. But I was speaking more to his baseline personality.”
“What do you mean?”
How this reminded Kent of his
days of teaching at Quantico. Okay, so it was only for one class, but still. There was a certain thrill to watching someone else’s mind expand.
“Talk to me about how he disposes of the bodies.”
Nicole opened her mouth, but shut it again. She thought a bit longer before answering. “He is a bit of a showman.”
“Exactly,” Kent concurred. “After all that work and flare, do you really think he would be content to sit back and let the police take it from there?”
“You aren’t suggesting…”
Kent was about to acknowledge that that was exactly what he was suggesting when the café door opened again. A tall, ravishing brunette entered, her long black dress hugging every curve. Her heavy eyeliner expertly applied, then smudged just enough to give that smoky look.
“Ah, but here is the showstopper,” Kent stated.
Nicole turned to take in the new beauty as the grin fell and was replaced by a frown. “Jaime? The EMT?”
Ah, if a picture was worth a thousand words, the look on Nicole’s face was worth a million.
“But…but…” Nicole balked. “Why would you lure her here?”
“Oh, my darling,” Kent cooed. “I allowed her to lure me.”
* * *
Nicole didn’t bother to open her mouth. Gibberish would just fall out. Her mind had to grasp the several bombshells that had just been dropped.
First Kent was suggesting, or, more like the profiler, telling her that the killer had inserted himself into the investigation. That someone she knew was the killer. Second, Jaime standing in that doorway. The EMT that had lured Kent here.
She couldn’t be the killer, could she? Everything about her was so wrong for the crime, yet here she stood, not looking a thing like she did while on the job. She had transformed from mousy to seductress in a few short hours.
The woman’s dark eyes passed over Nicole, then flickered back. Recognition registered. The smooth self-confidence was replaced by a look of barely contained panic. Jaime turned on her heel and headed back out the door.
Nicole knocked her chair over rushing to follow. “Police,” she announced as the room turned to her. Dodging past MelissaOTK, Nicole hit the door and burst out onto the street. No Jaime, though. Just her partner. He must have followed her here. Under other circumstances Nicole would have found that a bit overbearing—right now, though, it was a godsend.
Got Thrills? A Boxed Set (A McCray Collection) Page 6