by Jenna Kernan
The parrot’s speech was a song. “Hello. How you doin’? Hello! That’s a good boy!”
Juliette motioned toward the bird. “This is Jack-Jack. I named him after the baby from The Incredibles because he is just as much trouble. He’s a rescue. Sulfur-crested cockatoo.”
“He’s beautiful.” Nadine moved closer and the bird lifted his snow-white wings, the underside a buttery yellow. It glided back and forth like a street performer.
“I’m not sure I’ll keep him, but he was plucking his feathers, so I’m fostering him for a while.”
Juliette lifted a finger. The cockatoo wrapped a black leathery foot about her extended digit and climbed up her arm to her shoulder. Jack-Jack had found his person, and Nadine would be shocked if he ever returned to the refuge.
The pause stretched as both Jack-Jack and Juliette regarded her with unblinking eyes.
“Ah, I wanted to apologize for how I treated you after you told me about your mom. And for not coming to you sooner to say so.” She drew a breath and forged on. “And I’m so sorry for hitting you.” The amount she had to apologize for was almost comical.
Juliette motioned to the dinette. “Have a seat.”
Nadine took the chair she offered as her host placed Jack-Jack on the back of the opposite one and dropped a dish towel on the tile floor beneath him. Then she disappeared into the kitchen, returning to offer the bird a grape and Nadine a coaster and a bottle of cold beer. Finally Juliette sat between her and Jack-Jack, who seemed preoccupied with his grape.
“I should have told you about my mother,” said Nadine.
“Arleen Howler. Saw it on the news.”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t that something? Both of us. Huh?” Juliette rubbed her index finger with her opposite thumb. “When did the crime techs finish?”
“I don’t know.” Nadine gave her a summary of the hours since the police separated them.
“They had me there all night. I only got home a few hours ago.”
Juliette stared in silence and Nadine took a long swallow of the beer.
“I watched the police chief’s press conference at nine,” said Juliette. “Did you see it?”
“No.”
“Reporters asked why the ME’s office hadn’t released the cause of deaths yet.”
Jack-Jack had somehow eaten all the flesh from the grape and dropped the empty skin on the floor before wiping his beak on the back of the chair. Then the cockatoo lifted one foot and waved it toward Juliette. “Step up. Step-up-step-up-step-up.”
Juliette placed two hands on the table and pushed herself to her feet. Then she took him back to his cage. The bird swung inside, using his beak, and then hung upside down by one leg, with the grace of a circus performer, as he whacked the small bell suspended from a length of rope.
“Weird how much he sounds like you,” Nadine said.
“They’re mimics. He also imitates my text message alert chime. Very convincing. Sometimes, after he pulls that little stunt and sees me checking my phone, I can hear him laughing.”
Nadine narrowed her eyes on the bird, which now seemed too clever to be a proper pet. More like a toddler in a feather suit.
Juliette returned with a second bottle of beer, another coaster and a half-consumed bag of mini-pretzels and released the clip. She grabbed a handful and pushed the open end in Nadine’s direction.
In the living room, Jack-Jack now sat on his perch, beak tucked under a wing. He kept one beady black eye on Nadine. Smart bird.
Juliette lifted her beer and took a swallow.
“So,” Nadine said, restarting the conversation, “Officer Pender’s ex-wife was Hope Kerr.”
Beer and half-masticated pretzels spewed from Juliette’s mouth and across the table. She was on her feet, holding her hand over her mouth, as she headed for the kitchen, returning with paper towels to clean up the mess.
“Holy shit!” Juliette finished her mopping and tossed the sodden paper towels in the trash. “I’m off the case. I won’t be doing Pender’s autopsy.”
That was bad.
“Who, then?”
Juliette mentioned the other ME for District 12. “He’ll also be reviewing all my earlier autopsies,” she fumed.
“I’m sorry.”
Juliette reached across the table, bridging the distance between them, and momentarily clasped Nadine’s hand.
“Me too.” She drew back. “I feel so sad for his son. Two homicides and the scandal. What will happen to him?”
Nadine shook her head. She didn’t know. But she did know that a murderer’s victims included more than the dead.
“This case must be so hard for you.”
Every instinct told Nadine that this really was genuine understanding. Had she found a person who could look beyond where she came from? Someone who knew the truth and still accepted her?
Hope battled with the cynicism and the belief that she didn’t deserve such a friend. She teared up.
“Nadine? You okay?”
“No. Not really. I’ve been so afraid to tell anyone.”
Juliette nodded. “I know.”
And she did. Nadine was certain that if anyone could understand, it was Juliette.
“I think whoever is behind this,” said Nadine, “is working from inside our county.”
“Did you tell that to the Feds?”
“Yes. They’re looking into it.”
“Hmm. Well, I think this killer was trying to get you to murder me,” Juliette said. The calm in her voice was chilling.
Why had that thought not occurred to her?
“Oh, my God!”
“Exactly.”
They sat in silence, each with their thoughts. Finally Nadine spoke.
“Who do you think set us up?” asked Nadine.
Juliette pressed her mouth into a sad, grim line. She toyed with the beer bottle.
“Demko told me that the text to my cell came from a burner phone, so no way to trace it.”
“I think the FBI is using me as bait. Or I might be a suspect.”
“You and me both.” Juliette shook her head, disheartened.
“They’re cutting me and Demko out of the investigation.”
“Well, we can’t let them, because if you think you’re right, this copycat is playing with us. We have to stop it.”
“‘We’?”
“You and me. We’re a team.”
Perhaps she had no right, but she told Juliette how her profile conflicted with the FBI profiler’s, that Dun was the FBI’s prime suspect. And then she told her about the mothers of Dun, Ruz and Demko.
“Oh, God. How many of us are there?”
Twenty-Seven
And your enemies closer
Nadine called the station on Sunday and was told that Demko was on another line, so she just headed over there, stopping at her favorite gourmet grocer on Osprey en route. She arrived at the city police station after eleven and found Demko at his desk, looking like a potted plant left on a fire escape unattended for months.
He glanced up at her arrival.
“Did they call you back in?” he asked.
“Yesterday. When did you eat last?”
He gave her a surprised look and then glanced at the grocery bag she carried. “Um, I had some cold pizza yesterday.”
“Break room?” she asked.
He rose and motioned to the door. “That way.”
Once seated at a small circular table in the dreary room, she withdrew three plastic containers of salad: macaroni, soba and German potato. She added napkins, disposable plates, iced tea in bottles and two deli sandwiches wrapped in white paper and taped shut with the label sticker.
“Roast beef or smoked turkey?”
“Roast beef,” he said, and she handed him the sandwich.
She opened hers over the paper plate.
Demko poured out some chips onto the open butcher paper no longer surrounding his sandwich and offered to pour them for Nadine.
“Yes, thank y
ou.”
He shook out a generous portion.
She watched his sandwich disappear with astonishing speed. After offering her a helping of the macaroni salad, he ate the rest right out of the plastic container. Then he downed the iced tea and started on the potato salad. Watching this reminded Nadine of those food-eating contests. Finally he came up for air and placed a hand on his stomach.
“Wow. I was hungry.”
“Yes. You were.” She offered a smile.
He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her palm and making her nerves ring like a singing bowl.
“Thank you for lunch and breakfast and last night’s supper.” He set her hand back beside her plate.
“My pleasure.” She’d like to make this a more permanent responsibility, and that surprised her. The implications brought immediate fear and worry. Her smile slipped. “Do you often forget to eat?”
“Sometimes, when I’m investigating a homicide. Time is critical, and evidence collection—well, you only get one shot to get that right. But this case is worse than usual, because it’s not just about catching the perp. It’s about saving the ones to come.”
“In the series.”
“Yeah. And despite his denials, I didn’t adequately protect Pender.”
“You questioned him. Warned him.”
He shook his head, rejecting her attempt to let him off the hook.
“You spoke to Pender’s family?” she asked.
“Yeah. He listed his ex-wife, Hope, as emergency contact. But now it’s just his older sister. Parents died a while ago. Hit by a drunk driver on I-75.”
“Are you still processing the scene?”
“No. Finished. Were you okay last night? The hotel?”
“Yes. Thank you for the protective detail. I went to see Juliette this morning. She told me she was cleared of the homicide out on Lido.”
“Solid alibi.”
“Then I told her about the FBI’s prime suspect.”
He blew out a breath. “We haven’t found Dun yet. Listen. We have another missing persons case.”
She gasped, hand to her throat. “Why didn’t you call me?”
He grimaced. “On my to-do list. I wanted to verify some commonalities to the case first.”
“And?”
“Involved in an ongoing affair. And they vanished together. We recovered their vehicles. No use of credit cards or bank accounts since their disappearance, so I suspect they did not run off together.”
“Who?”
“Carla Giffin and Nick Thrasher. Coworkers. Both married.”
Nadine’s lunch cascaded about in her belly like a ship in a storm.
“Both employed at the same restaurant. He’s a part owner and cook. She’s a waitress. I’m sure the FBI will be speaking to you about it. Add it to your profile.”
“When?”
“Taken last night. Her husband called early this morning.”
Nadine reached for the remains of her iced tea and took a gulp.
“You okay?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not even slightly. The FBI is searching?”
“And investigating.”
“Are you off the case?”
“No, Pender is still my case. These two are outside my jurisdiction. County.”
“So, you can’t investigate?”
“It’s related to my case.”
“She kept her third couple, Michelle Dents and Parker Irwin, for two days.” She covered her mouth, thinking of the horror this pair might now be enduring and knowing they could still be alive. “Do they think Dun has them?”
“The FBI profiler says yes,” said Demko.
She made a face.
“You disagree? Dun is unmarried. Works in the system, just as you said.”
“He’s divorced, which is different. And he couldn’t have brought us all here, because he has no connection to or influence over hiring.”
“That’s true. You sure those two things are related?”
“Yes.”
“Working with someone?”
She shook her head. “Unlikely.”
“Their profiler thinks the pair will be in a park on the coast. They’re searching down as far as North Port.”
“Any luck?”
“Nothing yet.”
“My mother held them on a houseboat in the marina where she worked, an unoccupied rental.”
“They should already know that.”
“The detective’s case file said that she cleaned the insides so well that they had to use luminol to see any blood traces. She threw out the mattress from one of the cabins. Blamed it on the last rental.”
“I didn’t read that yet.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“So, this pair will not be killed out in the open, like Poletti and Lowe, found in the bay, or like Kerr and Pender, discovered at separate times and places.”
Nadine shook her head. “No, the killer will want time with them inside. My mother kept her third couple in a houseboat Friday night and all-day Saturday. We should search similar places.”
“Like where?”
“A shed, cabin, trailer, sailboat, houseboat, yacht…”
“Boats?” he said. “We’ve got hundreds in marinas and mooring fields just in the city alone.” He reached for his phone. “I’ll ask Sarasota Marine Patrol to begin a search.”
“Good. And call Torrin. Tell him to check up as far north as Bradenton and only as far south as Venice.”
While Demko made the call and spoke to Torrin, Nadine grabbed her bag and pulled out her laptop. She roused it from sleep and opened her comparison maps.
Demko ended one call and placed another. “I left a message for Torrin to call me. The marine patrol has been pulled for protection detail.”
“Protection?”
“Governor’s visiting.”
“Terrific,” she said with all the sarcasm she could muster.
“I’ll call the chief. See if she can reallocate our guys.”
She returned to her laptop and maps while he placed another call.
“I spoke to the chief. Convinced her to send our people out to search docked and moored vessels.”
“That’s great.”
He tucked away his cell and peered at her screen. “What’s that?”
“In addition to working on comparing our victims to my mother’s kills, I’ve created two maps. This is my mother’s crimes, a map of Ocala, and the red dots are the locations of my mother’s kill sites and the green are where her victims were discovered. I’m trying to estimate where they were dropped by time of death.”
He gazed at the map of the area she’d been working on for the last few weeks, alongside her offender profile work. The map of the Ocala region included many more data points than the one for this area.
“What are the dots?” he said, pointing.
“Each one is a data point. Capture sites, murder sites, body recovery sites.”
“And these rings of color?” he asked.
The concentric circles looked most like a weather radar map, with amorphous rings of various colors. The red core acted, not as the center of the storm, but as the most likely area of activity.
“These are probability rings. The highest likelihood is here, at the center, and drops from there. This band, for instance”—she indicated the turquoise ring—“holds a sixty-seven percent chance of activity.”
“Is this to prioritize suspects based on apprehension area?”
“Yes. It can be used for that. But also to place law enforcement inside the area of most likely activity.”
He pointed at the screen. “Blue dots?”
“Capture sites. Some are approximations.”
“So, Arleen began with capture, kill and dump together.”
“All one spot.” Nadine pointed at the map: a red, green and blue mark all together, indicating capture, kill and dump locations all in the same place. “Later, she captured, transported, k
illed and transported again. She held them for days.”
“More risk.”
“More fun,” said Nadine.
He gave her a look that made her uncomfortable. This entire thing made her uncomfortable, but it was out there and so she was no longer hampered from making comparisons out of fear of being unmasked.
There was a certain freedom to that.
He set aside his phone and lifted the remains of the soba noodles as he focused on her laptop.
Nadine opened a second map. “Give me the location where Giffin and Thrasher were taken.”
“Here.” He pointed and gave her the address.
“This is our unsub victims on a map of Sarasota, Desoto and Manatee Counties.” She added a mark to her document.
“Red marks for the murder sites?” he asked.
“Yes. The same.” She pointed. “Blue, capture. Red, kill. Green, dump.”
“I’ve never seen a map like this.”
“It’s a type of profiling,” she said. “Geographic profiling. The FBI asked me to consult. Requested a comparison focusing on similarities between our victims to hers and an offender profile. A map seems a logical addition.”
“Yeah. I agree.”
“And I’ve expanded it. Trying to establish the boundaries where the unsub prefers to work and which ones they avoid. It helps define travel routes, range. For instance, it’s clear that both perpetrators used a vehicle, at least to get to the locations of the body dumps. But my mother also used a canoe. She felt it left less evidence behind, like tire tracks and footprints.”
“How did you make these?”
“Texas State software program. It’s called the Rigel Software System, named after the star Rigel, the hunter. Determine the most probable area where the unsub lives.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Knowing where to look helps with stranger violence crimes. Helps you weed out the tips.”
“We have hundreds just on the Pender case. Fifty suspects, so far.”
“I can imagine.”
“What did Torrin think of this?” he asked.
“He hasn’t asked to see my work. I suspect he doesn’t care, just wants me inside the investigation. ‘Keep your friends close—’”
“‘And your enemies closer,’” said Demko, finishing the saying. “They are good at their jobs, impressive even. But they sure aren’t forthcoming with the investigation progress.” He leaned in, studying her work. “But he needs to see this.”
