by Karin Tabke
“I thought we had a deal, Detective?”
Stevie nodded. “We do, I just need to get out of here for a while.”
She wasn’t taking her toys and going home, she just needed time to herself to regroup. Jack’s unexpected and unwelcome coup had her second-guessing her skills. The woman part of her had been thrown for a complete loop. She needed to wrangle her pheromones into submission, and to do that she needed to get zen with herself.
She nodded to Deavers, then saw herself out despite Jack’s deep voice demanding she return.
CHAPTER SIX
“Stevie!” Jack called. He was damn frustrated. She was running from him. Again.
He got it; he’d left her in the middle of the night. He said he was sorry, now she needed to get over it.
The clock was ticking on this case. There was no time for female drama.
The elevator doors opened and closed before he could get to her. He took the stairs three at a time, and when the elevator doors opened, he was waiting for her. But the car was empty.
What the hell?
Where the hell are you? He texted.
He heard the wolf whistle of her cellphone. He followed it around the corner and found her standing against the concrete wall next to the service elevator.
“Stop running from me,” he said quietly, walking up to her.
She stared straight ahead. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
He watched the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, unable to stop the vision of the last time he’d seen them. Glistening with a soft sheen of sweat, the rose-colored nipples hard and wet from his relentless tongue. She had great tits. He pushed away the thoughts and the heat they inspired. She was hands-off. Not because she wanted it that way, but because he knew if he touched her once, it wouldn’t be enough. And when it fizzled out for him? How did he walk away a second time and not hurt her?
Leaning against the wall next to her, Jack slipped his hands into his trouser pockets where they would behave. Taking the hard road with Stevie worked most of the time when her pride got in the way of what was right. Or, as he learned what she wanted but was afraid to ask for. In this case, though, he knew he would get nowhere by rendering her helpless. So he softened his approach. “I remember a beautiful young woman who came into my classroom and thought she could take on the world with one hand tied behind her back. I had no doubt then that she could, I have no doubt now that she has. That isn’t going to change the fact that your top cop called my boss and asked for help.” He leaned into her. “Stop fighting me, Stevie.”
He felt the tremble shimmer through her body more than he saw it. Her vulnerability touched him in a way he least expected. The urge to take her into his arms and comfort her swept through him. He stepped back and slowly drank her in. Just like she had in the academy, she wore her long brunette hair in a thick braid. The highlighted copper and dark blond strands wove into a complicated swirl. Her skin was silky smooth and as unblemished as cream, her chin small but firm. Her lips were plump, sensuous, and parted like they were at the moment, highly kissable. High cheekbones set off her huge blue eyes with lashes so long and black he could see why someone might think they were fake. He knew they weren’t. There was nothing fake about the woman standing defiantly before him. Every curve and valley of her body was natural, and highly responsive to his touch.
“You’ve lost weight since the academy,” he said. “You look better with a little meat on your bones.”
Slowly she turned her head and glared at him. He tensed for the verbal punch that was coming.
“And you’d look better if you disappeared.”
He nodded. “I will after we make an arrest.” Then added, “If that’s what you want.”
Pushing off the wall she said, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”
“I’m sure it is.” He glanced at his watch. “In the meantime, you have ten minutes to collect yourself and return to the surveillance room.”
He turned on his heels and left.
Clutching the car key, Stevie sat in the Crown Vic for a solid twenty minutes staring out the windshield. She knew she would work with the devil if it meant locking up Spoltori. Looked like that was exactly with whom she would be working. But it didn’t mean that she had to like it, or that it would be easy.
Her father’s voice droned in her ears. “Emotions have no place in police work, Stevie. They weaken your objectivity.”
“Get a grip, Cavanaugh,” she said out loud to herself. She was a big girl, a big girl who knew how to use her gun and possessed the self-control of a Tibetan monk. She had this.
Determined, she opened the door, exited, then locked it. She wasn’t going back because Jack told her to; she was going back because it was what she wanted. To work tirelessly for the victims and their families until she made an arrest.
Staring straight ahead she marched back to the stuffy hellhole. Deavers was gone. Jack looked at his watch, “You’re fifteen minutes late, Detective. You’re going to pay for it.”
“Promises, promises,” she quipped as she glanced at the open bathroom door. It was empty. “Where’s Sidel?” she asked. It wasn’t like him to be late.
“Russo just informed me that he called in sick,” Jack answered.
“Where’s your man?” Stevie asked, tossing the backpack onto the small desk in front of the storyboard, and noticed a second video camera set up next to hers.
“Relieving Oliveras.” Jack scowled at her. “I know he’s your partner, but he’s inept. I have no use for ineptitude. He’s off the task force.”
Stevie opened her mouth to protest just because it was Jack making that call when it should have been hers. But it was the right call. Oliveras was inept and held back the case. “The city is cash-strapped. We’re over one hundred officers down from our minimum contract with the city. I had no choice but to work with him.”
“I don’t want to hear excuses, Cavanaugh, I want to hear how we’re going to crack this case wide open.”
“Then roll up your damn sleeves and let’s get to it.”
Stevie could see by the files pulled up on the laptop that Jack had been reading through them.
“I’ve made a copy of the case files that I can read over later tonight, but for now, I’d like you to bring me up to speed.”
Stevie nodded. “This is what I have so far.” Pointing to the picture of Spoltori up on the storyboard she said, “Mario Vittorio Spoltori is an independent stockbroker, his firm is called The Edge Fund. He thinks he’s a smart-ass, because his Master name is ‘The Edge,’ identifying his penchant for edge play.”
“Edge play?”
“BDSM lingo for beyond spanking. Edge play is all about hard-core pain, including cutting.”
Stevie pointed to the enhanced photos of each victim’s shaved pubis. “And let’s make no mistake about Spoltori’s place in the BDSM world, where there are levels of dominance. He is clearly and widely known as a Master. Not a Top or even a Dom but a Master. The master of edge play.” Jack nodded for her to continue. “All three victims were cut with the same sharp edge; forensics thinks it was an exacto knife. Each vic had the same symbol carved into them.” She moved in and looked closer at it. “The cuts are deep and premortem.” Stevie shivered. “Bastard likes to watch them bleed.”
“What is the symbol?”
“The mark of Cain.”
“I didn’t think there was a specific mark.”
“There isn’t, but if you research the term, this particular symbol pops up fairly regularly in underworld and fantasy cultures. The killer is using it as his calling card. It’s also Spoltori’s underground dungeon symbol, that’s how I made the initial connection. Then I dug deeper and discovered he’s Mayor Dyer’s war chest manager and connected each of his vics as being married to a heavy campaign contributor of the mayor’s.” She cocked a brow at Jack. “As you can
see, a little more than a hunch.”
“That’s good police work connecting the symbol, Detective.”
“Thanks.”
“So let’s delve into what makes our killer tick.”
Stevie nodded. “Spoltori was born Raymond Justin Arnold, an only child. Both parents deceased, murder-suicide when he was five.” Stevie pointed to a picture of two women to the far right of the board, but with lines connecting them to Spoltori, one in her early twenties and the other her forties. “His paternal aunt took him in. Ten years later, her daughter Jessica was kidnapped, tortured, and killed.” Stevie shivered. “I think she was his first kill.”
“Why do you think that?”
“It makes progressive sense.” Stevie moved to the lap top on the desk. Bending over she clicked through a few pages in her docs, then clicked on a link to an article in the Baltimore Sun. “It says here that Jessica Chambers disappeared on her way home from work, and the next day she was found naked, tortured, raped, and dead on the front porch of her house.” Stevie scrolled through the rest of the article. “But they made an arrest. Jerome Sikes, a coworker she had dated. He’s doing a life sentence.” She shook her head. “My gut is screaming they convicted the wrong guy. It was Spoltori.”
“Jessica doesn’t fit the MO of our three.”
“That’s because he either didn’t intend to kill Jessica or, if he did, because it was his inaugural kill and he was just beginning to perfect it.” She pointed to the article. “The foundation is there: kidnap, torture, rape, body laid out for public admiration.”
Jack typed something into his iPhone. “I just told Deavers to locate the detectives who worked the case in Baltimore. We’ll follow up with BPD tomorrow. How old was Spoltori when the cousin was killed?”
“Sixteen. He emancipated himself a year later, moved from Baltimore to Chicago and managed to scholarship himself through Northwestern, where he completely reinvented himself. From Chicago he moved to Denver, then to Oakland two years ago.”
Jack looked pointedly at her. “Before we go further on Spoltori’s profile, did you check with the PDs in his former places of residence for any missing persons or unsolved murders that could be linked to him?”
“Yes, and while there were no murders in Baltimore or Chicago, there were several assaults at Northwestern that began with his enrollment and ended when he graduated.” Stevie brought those images up on her computer. “But they weren’t coeds, they were middle-aged wives of faculty. Our three victims are middle-aged wives of high-profile campaign contributors.”
Jack moved in close behind her. Stevie stood stock-still, afraid of touching him. When he leaned past her and grasped the mouse and slowly rolled his index finger back and forth scrolling through the pictures, she squeezed her eyes shut. Carefully she inhaled, then ever so slowly exhaled.
“And Denver?” he asked, moving back, his right hand brushing against her right elbow as he did.
“One,” she rasped, sliding sideways and away from him. “I think after he killed his cousin it took him some time to settle down. Once he had, he started trolling in Chicago. Each subsequent attack was more advanced than the previous. When the heat got too hot he took off for Denver and there he made his second kill.” Stevie moved back toward him to bring that victim’s face up. When Jack refused to move, she nudged him with her elbow, then grasped the mouse. “Erica Strauss—”
“Wife of Leon Strauss, reviled pastor of Glad Tidings Mission.”
“Yes.” Stevie brought up the crime scene and flinched. As many times as she saw it, it still elicited a visceral reaction from her. “She was brutally murdered. Not with the finesse of our three victims. This was more personal in that it was so violent, but she bled out and he staged her the same.”
“For all that Strauss spewed his homophobic rhetoric, he lived the life.”
Wide-eyed Stevie asked, “Are you saying the pastor was gay?”
Jack nodded. “I was working violent crimes out of our Denver Bureau at the time. Because of their extreme ideology that lent itself to extreme violence, we’d been watching Glad Tidings for a while. Strauss was training haters like al-Qaida trains terrorists, all while he was trolling the Denver gay underground.”
“When I contacted the pastor he refused to discuss his wife’s murder with me. I requested the case files from Denver PD last month. ”
Jack sent another text. “We’ll have them tomorrow morning.”
“Can you get surveillance footage of the pastor and his hanky-panky travels?”
“That will be included in the file.”
Stevie pursed her lips. Apparently there were advantages to working with a fed.
“I’ll bet you a Val’s burger, that footage will out more than a few high profile faces.”
Jack grinned. “I haven’t had a Val’s burger since that day you introduced me to them.”
His eyes darkened. “That was a good day, Stevie.”
She swallowed. Up to the end of that day, it had been the best of her life. It was the day Jack—
“I don’t know who was more surprised when I kissed you,” he said. “You, me, or the recruits.”
Her breasts thickened as her nipples hardened and the memory came flooding back. It had been pouring rain. They’d just come off a long grueling day of PT out at the Santa Rita facility. Soaked and mud covered, she’d raced Jack the last fifty yards of the long-distance course. Just as he was about to pass her for the win, she grabbed his arm to knock him off balance, but he grabbed hers and they both went down, Jack twisting his body to absorb the impact, her on top of him, both sliding several yards in the mud and pouring rain, laughing their asses off. When they came to a stop, she was sprawled on top of him. He’d grabbed her braid, wound it around his fist and forced her lips to his. He’d done it with no regard to the rest of the recruits stomping past them.
She’d paid for that kiss. For the remainder of her time in the academy she was ostracized by her fellow recruits. A smile cracked her lips. Totally worth it.
“You should do that more often,” Jack said his voice low and husky.
She looked up at him and caught the raw desire in his eyes that he made no effort to hide. “Do what?”
“Smile.”
She scowled. “Before or after I gain more weight?”
“When’s the last time you ran in the rain?”
“When was the last time you minded your own business?”
Stevie turned back to the computer and printed out the pictures of Spoltori’s cousin and Erica Strauss. She taped them to the right of the Oakland victims, then wrote their names and date of death beneath each.
“Have you made contact with the aunt?” Jack asked.
“I called her, but she refused to talk to me and there isn’t money for a trip to Maryland.”
Jack pulled up a chair, “I wonder if the kill dates of Jessica and Erica were full moons?” He quickly did a Google search, looked up at Stevie, and smiled grimly. “Full moons. I’ll bet you another Val’s burger each of the attacks at Northwestern were during a full moon.”
Stevie dragged over the other chair, nudged his hands off the keyboard and pulled up her notes. When she searched the assault dates, they came up the same as the others. Full moons.
“I haven’t figured out the significance of the full moon,” Stevie said thinking out loud. “What we do know is that Spoltori is a sadistic misogynist Master who kidnaps and tortures middle-aged women before he ritualistically kills them on a full moon, leaving his mark of Cain on their pubis.” Her gaze rose to the storyboard. She stood and walked to the picture of Rose Chambers, his aunt. “She has vacant eyes.”
“I suspect it’s a common by-product when your only child is brutally murdered.”
Stevie shook her head. “I can’t begin to imagine.”
“What can you tell me about your three vic
s?”
Stevie pointed to the first picture. “Mary Coggins, forty-eight-year-old white female, wife to Jerald Coggins local boy makes good. He owns Computec, the cooler, more cost-effective version of the Geek Squad. She was a Cal grad, no children, and by all accounts a ballbuster.” Stevie moved to the second victim. “Alicia Marquez. Forty-six-year-old Hispanic female, wife to Alex Marquez, CEO of HostaGradiant, a green industrial recycling process for fossil-based waste, mother of two girls, Juniata and Cristina. Then there is June Poland, forty-eight-year-old white female, wife of Kevin Poland who is the CFO of Gemnon, a biochemical company, mother of two boys, Mark and Jake. All three husbands are Oakland based and generous contributors to Mayor Dryer. All three were kidnapped one week prior to their tortured, sexually assaulted bodies being staged on a prominent city corner.”
“Look a little closer, Detective. What other similarities do you see?”
“I have noted in my report that they all have short hair, brown eyes, and are in the same age bracket.”
“Look at his aunt, Rose Chambers.”
“She’s a bottle blonde.”
“What did she look like when her daughter was killed? And let’s go back further. Do you have a picture of Spoltori’s mother right before she died?”
“No. But I can get a postmortem one from the county coroner.”
“What was the date of his parents’ death?”
“April twelfth, ninety-eight.”
Jack entered the date into the search engine. He raised his green eyes to hers. “Full moon.”
“It doesn’t make sense. He was five when his father killed his mother and then shot himself. He was too young to be killing his mother over and over via these other women.”
“Unless his mother was brutalizing him.”
“I didn’t get that feeling from the reports. By all accounts, Genny Arnold was a loving mother.”
“I think we need to go back to the beginning to understand Spoltori’s motives.”
“Rose Chambers refuses to talk.”
