by Blake Pierce
When the cab pulled up in front of the building, she scrolled through the contacts on her phone and called Charlie.
He answered on the third ring with a bored-sounding “Hello?”
“Charlie, it’s Avery Black. How are you?”
“Living on the edge, I guess,” he said. “We have been instructed not to talk to you.”
“By who?”
“The boss man,” Charlie said. “As of this morning. I’m pretty sure my boss got a call from your boss and the order was put in.”
“Well, I need you to ignore that order. Would you do that for me?”
“I’d have to be sneaky about it,” he said. “But yeah. As soon as we were given the order, I was pretty sure that meant I’d end up seeing you before the day was out.”
“I’m parked outside in a cab right now,” she said. “I need to take a look at a certain file. How possible is that?”
“Hold on one second,” Charlie said. She heard him set the phone down and after that, there was silence. The silence went on for about thirty seconds before he came back on. “Maybe we won’t have to be all that sneaky after all,” he said. “In exactly one minute, just come in through the front doors. I’ll take you back to my exam room. You may have to leave out the back when you’re done, though.”
“That works,” she said. “See you in a bit.”
This time, she requested that the cab driver hang around so she wouldn’t be stuck at a place she was not supposed to be without a ride back to Rose’s apartment. As she headed quickly to the front doors of the medical examiner’s office, she couldn’t help but get a little thrill out of what she was doing. It was one thing to be successfully patching together a potential clue in a new case; it was a whole different feeling to be investigating when she knew she was not supposed to.
Charlie Tatum met her at the front doors, holding one of them open for her. He was a good-looking man, African-American and standing at about six-five. He wasn’t exactly fit but still had a sort of domineering presence. She felt it looming over her as she passed by him at the doorway and entered the building.
“Two others are in their exam rooms,” Charlie whispered, “and Chambers is working with some of your forensics people on something or another. So you should be good for a while, unless someone finishes up in their exam room.”
“Thanks, Charlie. I know you’re taking a risk.”
“Not a problem,” he said as they reached his exam room.
His exam table was empty and the place was clean, yet smelled of chemicals that reminded Avery of death. He locked the door behind them and went directly to the MacBook that was set up in the back corner of the room. It sat on a small counter, with a black rotary stool behind it. Charlie plopped down on the stool and logged into the laptop.
“Fortunately, we have a dummy account for when our own might get locked up,” he said. “This way, no one will ever know what I was looking for. So…what am I looking for?”
“I don’t have a name,” Avery said. “But it’s a college-aged girl. Twenty-one, I think. Killed yesterday.”
“You mean the girl that got killed with the nail gun?”
“Yes.”
“That was nasty,” Charlie said as he maneuvered the mouse here and there. “One of the worst bodies I’d ever seen.”
“But you can access the files from here, right?”
“What we have, yeah,” he said. “The body isn’t actually here. It’s still with forensics. I think they’re trying to determine what kind of nail gun would have been used.”
“But you’ve for preliminary information, right?”
“A bit more than that, I think,” Charlie said. He gave one final click of his mouse and then got up from his stool. “All yours.”
Avery took the stool and scanned over the file. She saw a series of photos of the body and the scene of the crime but those did not interest here right now. She was more interested in the details. She read over them and committed them to memory, not wanting to risk having Charlie print it all out for her.
Kirsten Grierson, age twenty-one. Seven nails placed into her body, two of which could easily have contributed to her eventual death, both having pierced the brain. Light bruising around her lower back which could be a fist. No signs of severe sexual assault, though there were also slight marks and abrasions around the sides of her breasts that indicated the killer had cupped or kneaded them. No fingerprints.
She’d been hoping for more, but still thought she had enough. She looked over the placement of the nails: between her eyes, above her left ear, one in each knee, one in the chest, one through the jaw, and one in the back of the head.
Abrasions on the breasts, Avery thought. That’s not accidental grazing. That’s the killer unable to help himself and having a free feel. So it’s a man who appreciates a woman’s body but is also smart enough to not give in to his lust and add his DNA to the scene. Also…no nails in the breasts or in the vaginal area. If it was a weird sex crime, that would almost be expected as sad as it seemed.
She thought it all over, then looked at the pictures. The girl was very pretty. And while the bra wasn’t anything revealing or particularly sexy, it showed just enough.
The killer appreciated her body. He grabbed her breasts. He also clearly wasn’t afraid of blood.
In her head, she juxtaposed that against what she knew of Howard Randall’s kills.
No signs of fondling, abuse, or general interest in the women’s bodies. They’d all been fully clothed. Excess blood was only found at two sites and it was believed that was because the carotid artery had been severed; the copious amount of blood at those scenes had been incidental, not on purpose.
And that lined up with what Diana Carver had theorized about Howard—that he tried to avoid touching people at all costs.
Doesn’t sound like a killer who would risk copping a feel at the last minute, she thought. Especially not when he had his method down to a science.
Avery nodded and got up from the stool. “Thanks, Charlie. I’m good here.”
“You find what you needed?”
“I did.”
“Good. Now get your ass out of here before you get us both in trouble.”
***
There was only one other place to go and she knew it was going to result in drama and a lot of yelling. But she felt that she had enough evidence to back up her theory. It was time to head to the A1 and talk to Connelly before this got out of hand—before the city’s fixation on Howard Randall allowed a killer to get off without suspicion.
But then there was also Rose to check in on. And Ramirez. She knew it was not her duty but she felt like she needed to drop back by the hospital to check on him. She’d left him nearly thirty hours ago and that was the longest she’d been away from his side since he’d slipped into the coma.
Being by his side won’t heal him, she told herself. And Rose has two cops stationed outside of her apartment. She’s safer than you are at the moment.
She marched quickly for the cab, still waiting for her outside of the chief medical examiner’s office. When she got into the back seat again, she wasted no time in giving her destination. There was only one place where she’d actually be contributing anything.
Despite the hellfire that would likely fall because of her presence, she had to go back to the A1.
CHAPTER NINE
She barely made it out of the cab before the gathered news vans recognized her face. She bulldozed her way through them, not giving them a moment of her time. As she made her way to the door, looking straight ahead and doing her best to be unflustered by their swarming, she noticed that they were at least giving her some distance. She wondered how much yelling Connelly had done at them to this point. The thought of it made her smile, but it did not make her any more hopeful about the unscheduled meeting she was about to have with him.
When she finally made it through the doors, she was greeted with a multitude of shocked faces. She also saw some friendly expr
essions too—those who apparently thought she was being outed simply because of her past. For the most part, though, the feeling in the building seemed to be the same.
You’re in deep shit now.
She said nothing to no one as she marched through the front lobby and then into the adjoining hall. She passed a few uniformed officers and then spotted Finley. He was standing in front of Connelly’s door, talking to another officer. When he looked up and saw her, he looked worried for a moment. He then seemed to remember that he was technically over her in the chain of command since she had been removed from the current murder case and all things having to do with Howard Randall. He excused himself from the officer he had been talking to and approached her with a scowl on his face.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” he hissed, trying not to draw too much attention. There were already enough eyes on them as it was. Such anger in his voice made him sound like another person altogether. She had never truly seen Finley mad before.
“I need to talk to you and Connelly.”
“No. You can’t just barge in here and make a scene like this!”
“What scene? Have I been fired? Have I been dismissed? No. So I have just as much of a right to be here as you do. Now—”
Connelly’s head suddenly appeared from the around the edge of his door. Her voice had apparently drawn him out. As she had expected, he looked pissed.
He narrowed his eyes and practically sneered at her. “Get in here right now,” he barked. Apparently, he did not have the same concern as Finley in terms of people hearing a confrontation between them.
She did as asked and traipsed into his office. Helpless to do anything else, Finley followed behind her. He closed the door and stood in the corner, as if waiting for Connelly’s wrath to fill the place.
To Avery’s surprise, Connelly did a fine job of remaining as calm as possible. He took a series of deep breaths as he sat down in the chair behind his desk. When he was as comfortable as he was going to get, he looked up to her and said: “Why are you here?”
“Because I feel like I have enough evidence to support the fact that Howard Randall did not kill Kirsten Grierson.”
“You mean to tell me that while you’ve been at home, you came up with evidence that we were unable to get with more than twenty men actively on the case?”
“Apparently so,” she said.
His patience was wearing thin. He now sat forward with a look of fake chagrin on his face. With a crooked smile, he said: “Please. Do tell me how you cracked this one. And when you’re done, why don’t you tell me why in the hell you’re so determined to separate that maniac from this murder?”
“While we’re asking questions,” Avery said, “I’d like to know why you’ve been so insistent on me staying off of this case. Is it because I’m too close to it? Is it because you’re afraid how much Ramirez’s condition has affected me? Or are you just worried about the bad press?”
“I don’t care how close you are to it,” Connelly said. “But if I’m being honest, yes…this is the sort of situation the media falls over themselves for. They’ll spin some sadistic story out of it. They will tie you to Randall somehow and not only are you going to be tarnished by it, but this whole damned division will be, too! Do you not care about that?”
“Of course I care about that,” she yelled. “And if you cared as much as I did, you’d know that taking me off of the case is the dumbest thing you could do. I know your good friend the mayor has deemed it so, but he’s not the one in this office all the time, or at the crime scenes, now is he?”
Connelly rubbed at his head and looked down at his desk. “Avery…you have exactly five minutes to tell me what you think you have found. You take a second longer than that, and I’ll have you escorted out of the building.”
“Kirsten Grierson was brutally murdered. There were also marks on her breasts that suggest she was at the very least fondled during the death and staging of the body. She was also in her underwear. The only similar thing about the entire scenario is that she was a pretty twenty-one-year-old college girl.”
“Wrong,” Connelly said. “You missed the most important detail. And that’s the fact that she’s dead.”
“You know I’m right,” Avery said. “You’re just blinded by this city’s paranoia.”
“Don’t you tell me—”
“Don’t cut in on my five minutes,” she barked. “Now…all that blood. The gruesome nature of it. It was too gross. It was over the top. The brutal nature of it was intentional. Now look back at all of Howard Randall’s victims and tell me when he acted in such a way. All of his victims were one to two wounds at most. Simple. Clean and precise. It’s almost as if he hated blood—as if he really didn’t want to touch his victims at all.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Connelly said. “I’ve thought of all of this. But it just lines up. Two weeks after his escape, a pretty college girl winds up dead. Maybe he changed in prison. Maybe that confinement broke something in him.”
“No,” Avery said. “Remember, I met with him a few times.”
“Oh, I know all too well,” Connelly said.
“He was the same man I defended as an attorney. Whatever weird quirks he had when he was killing…they’re still there. He hasn’t changed. Not this much.”
“Okay, so let’s say Howard Randall did not kill Kirsten Grierson. Do you have any leads as to who did?”
“No. But it would be simple to run up some sort of a profile. It could be someone who looked up to Howard. Maybe even a copycat who is just a little too bloodthirsty to do it right. Maybe it’s someone killing as an ode to Howard—motivated by his escape. Maybe trying to impress him…to get his attention.”
“Those are good theories,” Connelly said.
From his place in the corner, Finley nodded his agreement.
“But do you know what makes even more sense?” Connelly asked. “Howard Randall—a known murderer of college-aged girls in the Boston area, escapes from prison. Two weeks later, a college-aged girl from the Boston area is murdered. That’s a simple equation. All signs point to Randall.”
“You’re being purposefully closed-minded on this,” she said.
“No. You’re trying to make it into something it’s not just because of whatever fucked up connection you have with him.”
Avery bit back a stream of curses that wanted to come spewing from her mouth. She clenched her fists, fuming with rage.
“Besides,” Connelly said, “you won’t have to worry much longer. We’ve been working on a lead ever since this morning—not that it’s any of your business.”
“What lead?”
“From an apartment complex. Two different tenants claim to have seen a man who bears a resemblance to Howard Randall sneaking around an old building at the end of their block. That old building just happens to be where one of Randall’s victims was found.”
“Well then, let’s go,” she said.
“Too late,” Connelly said. He looked at his watch and said, “We’ve got a team moving in right now. They should be arriving in about three minutes.”
Avery’s fuming anger turned into shock. She could only stand there in stunned silence as Connelly put on a headset and patched himself through via his phone to one of the officers on site in order to listen as they carried out their orders.
CHAPTER TEN
Eleven miles away from the A1 headquarters where Avery and Connelly were having a tense back-and-forth, O’Malley was quickly stepping out of his patrol car. Three other cars were pulling in behind him, all coming to quick and quiet halts. He waited a beat for everyone to get out of their cars. Including O’Malley, there were five officers in all.
They had all parked on the south side of Commerce Street, adjacent to a rundown apartment complex. Someone from that complex had made the call to the A1, followed by a second less than eight minutes later. Apparently, there was a very good chance that Howard Randall was hiding out in the warehouse that sat along the corn
er of Commerce Street—the very same warehouse O’Malley was leading the four other officers toward.
It was nearing noon, so the streets weren’t as quiet as O’Malley would have liked, but that was okay. This was a derelict part of town—not a part of the city that was going to be clogged with workers rushing to grab a bite to eat on their lunch break. The cracked pavement beneath his feet and the litter strewn against the side of the warehouse was a clear indication of the lack of love and attention these blocks got.
O’Malley looked to the back of his assembled line. This was the line-up he’d asked for—all officers that he knew well and trusted. He knew that Connelly was technically there as well, listening on and present as a live attendant through O’Malley’s earpiece.
When O’Malley gave a nod, the officer at the back of the line nodded back and then split off from the group. He drew his sidearm and traced around the edge of the warehouse, taking the back door. The guy’s name was Mitcham and it was his duty to catch anyone trying to retreat out of the back…namely Howard Randall.
O’Malley then prepared himself as he marched toward the front door of the warehouse. It was an old metal door that could only be pushed inward. It was covered in tags from graffiti artists. He pointed to the officer beside him and then to the door, making an opening gesture.
The officer grabbed the handle and looked to O’Malley for a signal.
O’Malley drew his sidearm, took a deep breath, and looked at the other three. He gave Mitcham another five seconds to make it around to the back and then nodded.
The officer drew the door open quickly and O’Malley slipped inside with a speed and agility he knew he still possessed but rarely got to display.
The building was one large room, though the fragments of a deteriorated wall were jumbled up along the far side.
