“Happened? How the fuck? You’re lucky you missed. You know what sort of evidence is left when a body hits a car? Evidence that can be traced back to your car.”
Blackwell loosened his hold slightly and Prescott sucked in air, tried to remain calm, but his heart thumped in his chest. “It was a mistake. I admit it.”
“A big mistake. Which means I’m outta here.”
“No!”
“And what? You’re gonna stop me?”
“I’ll double the offer.”
Blackwell narrowed his gaze, as though contemplating. Prescott had hired Blackwell because he came highly recommended, with a history of working black ops for the military, a clean record, and a checkered past. He was perfect for the job.
“Here’s the thing, dickhead,” Blackwell said. “The moment I find out someone else is horning in on my mark, that person becomes a liability to me. Even if it’s the person who hired me. You do not want to become a liability to me. Clear?” he said, tightening his hand around Prescott’s throat once more.
“Abundantly.”
“Good. Unfortunately for your stupidity, you’ve removed one course of action. Using a vehicle as a means of death. She’s bound to have said something about nearly being run over. That makes it suspicious if she’s killed by a car down the line. Which is why I’ve come up with this idea.” He stepped back, pulled out a folded newspaper from his overcoat pocket, then pointed to an article.
Prescott took a deep breath, tried to look calm as he eyed the newsprint, read something about identifying a Jane Doe. “A drawing of a dead girl?”
“Not just any dead girl. It fits close with the case the Bureau picked up from San Francisco PD, the girl who’s in the hospital. I’d say they’re working with a serial killer who missed his mark by one. But they’re not even connecting the cases publicly.”
“A serial killer?”
“Yeah. We could do something with it, but it’d be complicated.”
“Why can’t we just do a simple hit? No muss, no fuss?”
“Because, dumbfuck. The FBI isn’t likely to sit back and ignore a hit on one of their agents. Nor would they ignore a hit-and-run on one, either.”
“What about a suicide?”
“FBI, remember? They suspect everything. This is the best way.”
“We-I don’t want her to suffer.”
Blackwell eyed him, his gaze fixed with a look of disbelief. “And what? Being slammed with a car was gonna ease her pain?”
“She’s a friend of the senator’s, for God’s sake.”
Blackwell stepped closer, put his face right up to Prescott’s. “This is a no-brainer. One agent stands in the way of the objective. Remove the agent, obtain the objective.”
“As long as you don’t forget the idiot who left a suicide note, which several people have read. We remove them, too?”
“Whatever it takes. I’ve got a friend at Houston PD. We were partners in the service. He’s looking into the note to see if the situation is salvageable…”
Prescott pushed Blackwell away from him, trying to regain some control, make sure the man knew he wasn’t afraid and was the one really in charge. “Tell me why you think this Jane Doe case works in our favor?”
“My sources tell me that there’s absolutely no DNA found on that Hill City Jane Doe. They’ve got no way to tell if she’s the victim of the guy who did the girl in the hospital. And top it off, the investigating detective’s an idiot.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Your little agent’s been in contact with the girl in the hospital, and her sketch of the Jane Doe conveniently appeared in every Bay Area paper this morning. So why not set up your agent as the next victim?”
“You think you know enough about their cases to do that?”
Blackwell smiled. “Like I said, it’s a no-brainer.”***
Richard Blackwell watched as Prescott walked off, before heading in the opposite direction. He took out his cell phone, hit the speed dial.
“We’re on,” he said, to the man who answered. “With double the salary.”
“Nice job. You know what to do.”
Perhaps Sydney shouldn’t have finished the remaining two beers in the fridge last night. That thought magnified when, head pounding, she pulled on her gray sweats for her normal morning run. She’d made it as far as the bottom of the stairs, then turned around and went back inside. Running was definitely out. Not that she’d gotten dead drunk, more that she wasn’t used to drinking that much. Instead she spent the time allowing the hot shower to erase some of the night’s stresses. It did little but give her time to think, which, looking back, made the run seem so much easier in comparison, headache and all.
What she couldn’t figure out was how could her father be in some sort of special ops and never mention it? How could her mother never have mentioned it? And what the hell did her father do in the service if his job wasn’t simply to take the damned photos and drawings he’d always said was his responsibility? She thought of Gnoble, his political aspirations, and it occurred to her that if they were doing something glorious, he, of all people, would have announced it to the world. Instead, McKnight committed suicide when he was being investigated for a high-powered political appointment, after mentioning something about her father. Something worth blackmailing for.
By the time she dressed, grabbed the envelope with the photo, then left for work, her mood was downright ugly, and she attributed it directly to stepping outside her routine. She cussed out two drivers who’d gotten in her way, and left the McDonald’s empty-handed when the poor clerk couldn’t figure out how to ring up a sausage sandwich without egg, something Sydney thought was a perfectly reasonable order. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she realized that her temper was flaring at a pace that had all the earmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. Probably nothing to do with the drinking or missing her run, and everything to do with revisiting her father’s murder case and the man who had been convicted of killing him. Not that she could forget Scotty’s bombshell and that damned photo McKnight had mailed to her. At least that’s what she told herself, when Lettie informed her that Dixon wanted her in his office for a briefing on the Jane Doe from Hill City.
She shoved the manila envelope in her top drawer, schooled her features, trying to appear calm, not let on that she was having any issues unconnected to the current cases. A moment later, Michael “Doc” Schermer walked in. Tall, slim, with white hair and dark eyes, he’d been given the nickname because he looked more like a doctor than an FBI agent. Rumor had it that he’d originally wanted to be an eye doctor, but somewhere along the way ended up at the FBI. And the Bureau took full advantage of that “look,” using him in any undercover operations that involved the medical field, including the Harrington insurance fraud case that Dixon was so anxious for her to finish.
“Morning, Fitz,” Schermer said, with a polite nod. “Morning, Doc.” She liked him for two reasons. He was nice and he’d never been friends with Scotty. That not only earned him bonus points in her book, it also meant that she could trust him not to feed info back to Scotty-which was a lot more than she could say about Scotty’s old roommate from the academy, Tony Carillo, who walked in a moment later. Carillo was just a few years older than she, late thirties, stood maybe an inch shorter than Schermer’s six-three.
Carillo was not an easy man to ignore, and for more reasons than his warped sense of humor and quick Italian temper. He had dark eyes and olive skin, with a perpetual five o’clock shadow, even at eight in the morning, which always gave her the feeling that he’d just climbed out of bed- leaving a very satisfied woman behind. She wasn’t sure he would’ve been amused at such a thought. Word had it that he’d recently taken up celibacy after discovering his wife was sleeping with another man.
That was not, however, the reason she’d done her best to avoid Carillo ever since she came to San Francisco. It was more to do with the fact she was a by-the-book agent. If Carillo followed any rules
, they were of his own making, and sometimes she wondered how it was he and Scotty, polar opposites, ever became friends in the first place.
Carillo and Schermer flanked the doorway to Dixon’s office, and Schermer said, “Heard you think we have a serial killer working the area.”
She handed Dixon her notes on the case. “So it appears.”
“Yeah?” Carillo said, crossing his arms, eyeing her. “How’d you get it, when you weren’t even here the past couple days?”
Dixon replied, “The case isn’t hers. She was on a sketch down in Hill City. Found a Jane Doe with injuries similar to our kidnap victim, Tara Brown. Possible sexual assault, head wound, stab wounds, and a bite mark on her breast, which, I might add, wasn’t noted by the investigator, but was found in the autopsy.”
“They missed it?” Carillo asked. “How the hell do they miss something like that?”
“Could be an oversight,” Sydney replied. “Small department. Possibly the detective wasn’t advised at the autopsy.” Or possibly he was an idiot, but that thought she kept to herself. She briefed Carillo and Schermer on what she’d found. “If there’s nothing else,” she said, after finishing, “I have another case I need to finish up.”
“What?” Carillo said. “You’re not going to try to get assigned?”
“I’ve got cases of my own to work,” she replied.
“Thanks,” Dixon said. She left, glad to be out of Carillo’s company, and she overheard Dixon tell the two, “I agree with Fitzpatrick. Good possibility we’ve got a serial rapistmurderer on our hands. I want the two of you to head down to Hill City, see if they missed anything else of significance.”
She thought about warning Carillo and Schermer about the detective down there. Maybe she would after she got something to eat, then dug up a contact for Houston PD to see if she couldn’t get a copy of that suicide note. She took the elevator to the deli, realized she’d forgotten to get money, and managed to dig up enough change from the bottom of her purse to cover a bag of cookies. Some breakfast. She couldn’t even get the damned bag open. By the time she returned to the office, cookie bag still intact, Carillo and Schermer were back at their desks, talking with a few other guys. They were laughing about something, but shut up the moment they saw her, their expressions suddenly turning far too innocent.
She had bigger things to worry about, like breakfast, and the cop-proof bag it was contained in. The guys mumbled their faux greetings as though nothing were amiss, and their laughter gained momentum after she passed by.
She ignored them, reached her cubicle, gave one last tug on the bag, and cookies went flying, one of them rolling four cubicles down, landing at Schermer’s feet. “Crap!”
A burst of laughter followed, and Sydney could see them over the top of the divider. They were looking right at her, no doubt having seen the cookie debacle. Schermer leaned down, picked up the cookie, and tossed it back at her. Carillo was on the phone, trying to appear serious, and he turned his back on them and her, waving for everyone to be quiet-just as her phone rang.
On cue, they all shut up. Well, two could play this game, and Sydney picked up her phone and said in her cheeriest voice, “Special Agent Fitzpatrick.”
“Are you the agent who did the drawing? The one in the newspaper?” The voice was low, not a whisper, but definitely sounding as though the caller was trying to disguise his identity.
She brushed the cookies and crumbs into a pile on her blotter, then picked a broken one, eyed the men. “Which paper?”
“The Chronicle.”
“Yes.” Surely these guys could come up with something original?
“I like your drawing.”
“Do you have some information regarding the case?” Sydney asked in her best official voice. The guys were leaning over Schermer’s desk, and Carillo was still shushing them to be quiet.
“Yes,” came the voice. She looked at the cookie, couldn’t believe the thought that just crossed her mind, because it was totally out of character… Do it, a voice seemed to say, and for once, she listened. Threw the cookie. And was horrified when it hit Carillo on his back. Schermer nearly died laughing. That was when she realized she couldn’t hear the laughter on her phone, as the caller continued with, “I’m going to look for another one. And bite her, too. Just like the others. Just like the girl in the drawing. Maybe I’ll bite you. I really like your drawing.”
“ Who is this?”
A click, and then dial tone. And the cookie came flying back at her, bounced against her shoulder and onto the floor, just as Dixon stepped out of his office. “What’s going on?”
“I have no idea,” Carillo said, covering the phone receiver with one hand as everyone hightailed it back to their cubicles. Schermer wasn’t so lucky and tried to blend into the background.
Dixon’s gaze swung past them, down the hall, at the clerical staff who apparently had left their work to watch. “You three, my office, now.”
“The guys were just having a little fun. Me, I’m innocent,” Carillo replied. “For once.”
“ Now.”
Carillo said into the phone, “Look, I have to go. We’ll continue this conversation later.”
The three of them marched in, and before Sydney could get a word in edgewise, Schermer said, “Hey, it was just a sketch, a parody.” He opened a manila folder, showing a piece of paper inside. “have you seen this suspect?” was scrawled on the top just above a stick figure with a smiley face. He’d signed it: Michael Jacob Schermer, substitute artist.
Carillo eyed the drawing. “Pretty good likeness, don’t you think?”
Sydney barely glanced at the drawing. “Please tell me you were the one who called my desk?”
“Not unless you’re the one asking me for alimony.” “Did you?” Sydney asked Schermer.
“No one did.”
She knew what she was hearing, but didn’t want to believe it. She had to believe it. There was no other explanation. “Son of a bitch.. .”
Dixon looked at each of them in turn. “Someone want to tell me what I’m missing here, besides the fact we’ve mistaken our office for a high school cafeteria food fight?”
The room felt suddenly chilly, and Sydney crossed her arms as she tried to comprehend the full impact of what this meant. “The phone call,” she said, trying to think of all the possibilities, one being that someone was playing a cruel, sick joke. Sydney looked at Carillo. “We haven’t released info on our victims being bitten. So either someone with enough knowledge about the case just called, or the UnSub did. And if it was him…” Sydney thought about the words she’d heard. “He’s about to kidnap another woman.”
15
Sydney repeated the phone conversation as she remembered it. Dixon, Carillo, and Schermer listened, and when Sydney finished, Carillo said, “Well, now we know he’s following his victims in the paper.”
“Okay,” Dixon said. “This case moves up on the priority list.”
Carillo cleared his throat, and Schermer said, “Uh, yeah. One problem. I just got a page that I’m due in court in a half hour.”
Before Sydney could decipher the subtleties of that byplay, Dixon said to her, “You’re going to have to assist Carillo for the day.”
“But the Harrington report-”
“Moves down on the list. You have any other cases that need immediate attention, give them to Schermer here.” He nodded to the stick figure drawing. “Seems to me if he has this much free time, he needs the work. Now see if you and Carillo can’t get along for the short time it takes to get this investigation under way.”
Though Sydney wasn’t happy about being paired with Mr. Pipeline-to-Her-Ex Carillo, in the grand scheme of things, she had much bigger issues, and she returned to her desk, expecting that Carillo might follow, at least to get her notes on the case, go over what she’d found at Hill City and in her interview with Tara Brown. Typical Carillo, he didn’t follow, left her sitting there twiddling her thumbs while God only knew what the hell he was
doing.
First thing, she thought as she got up to look for him, was that they needed to set some ground rules, number one being that Scotty needed to be left out of the loop.
Carillo wasn’t at his desk, and after wandering the halls, she found him in a different office on the phone. Judging from the conversation, his wife was on the other end. “No,” he said. “I am not selling the condo. You’re living in a goddamned mansion, with a guy who makes ten times what I make. You think you could see fit to allow me a goddamned place to live?” He listened to whatever it was she had to say, then finished with “Whoever wrote the line ‘for better or worse’ sure as hell never had to live with the worse.” He slammed the phone in the cradle, and seemed to stare at it for several seconds, then looked up, saw Sydney, and in a surprisingly calm voice said, “Give me a minute and I’ll meet you at your desk.”
By the time he arrived, he was all business, and she picked up her case file and handed it to him. “This is everything I have on the Jane Doe.” Then she handed him a manila folder, which he opened. “That’s the suspect sketch from our victim the other night, the woman we think may have been abducted and raped by the same suspect.”
He sat in a chair, dropped the binder on his lap, then opened the folder with the drawing. He took a good look, handed it back to her, then opened the case file. “And you think these two are related because of the bite marks?” he asked. “Because the way I see it, your Jane Doe has way, way more wounds.”
“But when you look closer, there are some similarities besides the bite marks. Body dumped near an isolated area at a park and in water for one.”
“Not a lot to go on.”
“You’re right. Until Dr. Armand compares the bite wounds, and either confirms or denies-”
“Or states it’s inconclusive.”
“Or states it’s inconclusive,” she agreed, “we won’t know. But either way, you have two crimes that are clearly savage and in need of solving. One’s ours, the other Hill City’s. And I can tell you they won’t be pleased by your presence.”
Face of a Killer Page 11
