TWIN KILLER MYSTERY THRILLER BOX SET (Two full-length novels)

by Osborne, Jon

  “Hell, Gary,” she said. “Where else do we ever start from?”

  Templeton sighed as she took a left onto East 9th Street and pointed the car in the direction of Lake Erie, which had nearly become her permanent home after the plane crash back in May. “Good point,” he said. “Well, at least we’re not starting from a negative number, though, right? Who knows? Maybe we’ll get a little luckier this time around.”

  Dana laughed without humor. “Sun shines down on even a dog’s butt every once in a while.”

  Templeton cast his gaze out the window and up at the pitch-black skies overhead. “Interesting way to put it, Agent Whitestone.”

  Dana pursed her lips and straightened up in her seat, staring straight ahead through the windshield. “Wasn’t it just, though?”

  CHAPTER 25

  Ten minutes later, Dana pulled the Protégé into the parking lot of the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office on Cedar Avenue and let out a slow breath that deflated her chest.

  “Ready to go do this?” she asked Templeton, feeling the thrill of the chase begin to boil away in her stomach again.

  The Cleveland cop nodded in his seat next her. “Yep, but are you absolutely sure you’re feeling up to this, Dana? You still look a little pale to me.”

  Dana dismissed his concern with a quick sweep of her right hand while she slid her sleek silver vehicle into an empty space in the parking lot. Downshifting to park, she switched off the engine and adjusted the rearview mirror to check her appearance.

  Not great, but not all that bad either, considering the circumstances. “I’m fine, Gary,” she said, returning the mirror to its proper position before turning in her seat to face him. “As far as my coloring goes, I always look this pale. Curse of the Irish, I suppose. Hell, I get sunburned if I read for too long under anything stronger than a forty-watt bulb.”

  Templeton laughed at her dumb joke, but Dana didn’t bother mentioning to him the other curse of the Irish that sometimes ruled her life – a little too often for her to simply dismiss it as the harmless blowing off of some steam. The curse of the Irish that sent her running straight for the bottle whenever things got too difficult for her to deal with. Still, her alcohol use had clouded her judgment when she’d been investigating the Cleveland Slasher case – had slowed her down mentally when she’d needed to be clear-headed the most – and she was determined to never make that same mistake again. Like it not, people’s lives depended on her and she couldn’t afford to let them down.

  Not now and not ever again.

  Exiting the Protégé, she and Templeton stepped out into the freezing wind and headed quickly for the entrance to the coroner’s office fifty feet away, the cold winter air slicing effortlessly through their jackets like the sharp scalpels that were no doubt slicing through the deceased bodies inside.

  Dana shivered hard; the disconcerting thought suddenly making her wonder if she’d ever feel warm again.

  Templeton hustled up the front steps ahead of her and held open the door for her before stepping inside himself. When they’d reached the front desk in the lobby, he asked the receptionist where they might find the chief coroner. The woman behind the desk smiled and directed them down a long hallway.

  Dana and Templeton moved down the hall toward Dr. Philip Johnson’s office without speaking, both gearing up mentally for what lay ahead. As the head coroner for the entire county, Johnson hadn’t been especially pleased with Dana when she’d pressed him into exhuming and re-autopsying the four victims previous to Jacinda Holloway in the Cleveland Slasher case. And unlike Gary Templeton, Johnson was the kind of guy who did hold onto a grudge.

  Held onto it like a dog with a bone clamped down hard between its teeth.

  Dana stopped herself mid-thought. To say the least, an inconvenient way of thinking about things when Christian Manhoff had died in the exact manner he had.

  In any event, she had very little doubt that Johnson had gone apoplectic when he’d found out that somebody had snuck into his building and attached a picture of her half-brother to one of Christian Manhoff’s nipple rings. To his mind, Dana and anything connected with her probably constituted nothing less of a nuisance than a plague of locusts.

  A nuisance of biblical proportions.

  Finally coming to a stop outside Johnson’s door, Dana made a mental note to have background checks run on everyone who’d worked at the coroner’s office over the past three years – much as she’d done with everybody who’d played a part in investigating the Cleveland Slasher murder scenes two years earlier since it had seemed like whoever had been committing those murders had possessed some sort of background in detective work. Nothing had come of it during that case, but who knew? Like Templeton had said to her back in the car, maybe they’d get luckier this time around.

  And maybe that Publisher’s Clearinghouse letter stuck in her mailbox back home had a cashable check inside with her name on it.

  Dana shook her head and tried to reason things through. Wasn’t easy. Still, in all likelihood she knew that somebody had probably just been playing a prank on her by attaching a picture of Nathan Stiedowe to Christian Manhoff’s nipple ring, enjoying a mean-spirited laugh at her expense. Law-enforcement types were notorious for their macabre senses of humour, weren’t they?

  Damn right, they were. There was a time-honored tradition in the field of hazing your fellow cops with all the subtlety of drunken frat boys at a keg party. It was just part of the deal, she knew, the nature of the beast. Always had been and no doubt always would be.

  Then again, maybe somebody had been deadly serious about the whole thing.

  Only one way to find out.

  Pity it had to be through a man who detested her as much as Johnson did.

  The chief coroner opened the door to his office before Dana even had a chance to knock. Dana creased her face, figuring somebody must have called him to alert him to the fact that a Cleveland cop and an FBI agent had just strolled through the front doors of his building.

  He barely looked at her and shifted his gaze immediately to Templeton. “Come with me,” he said brusquely. “I know what you’re here for.”

  Brushing past them rudely, Johnson led them down the hall to the main autopsy room thirty feet away. Ever the proper gentleman, he opened the door and entered first without holding the door for Dana. She grabbed the closing door and stepped in after him, with Templeton bringing up the rear.

  The sickly-sweet smell of formaldehyde immediately filled Dana’s nostrils as she entered the room, tickling all the tiny hairs on the inside of her nose and making her want to sneeze. From the corner of her eye, she watched Templeton wrinkle his own nose against the offending odor, and she didn’t blame him one little bit.

  The entire space stank of death.

  The autopsy room itself was a cold, sterile place, filled with refrigerated drawers for storing the dead bodies. Dana had seen a lot of horrible things over the course of her fourteen-year career with the FBI, but for some reason the stark sight of Christian Manhoff’s naked and bloated body lying dead on a shiny metal slab twenty feet away suddenly made her want to cry.

  Was this where life ended? she wondered. Whether you lived it the right way or the wrong way? Whether you lived it with love in your heart or hate? Was this the end waiting for all of them? Her? Johnson? Templeton?

  She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the fact that Crawford Bell and Eric Carlton had laid on tables just like these recently, in this very same room. Maybe even on the same table. Not to mention her poor mother and father.

  Dana shuddered. Whatever most people’s faults might be – and she knew everybody had their fair share – the vast majority of human beings deserved a fate far better than this. Deserved to be kept warm and safe and loved. Deserved better than having someone like Dr. Phillip Johnson clinically poking at them and prodding them and slicing open their sternums to find out just how much their hearts and spleens and livers might weigh.

  “Could you br
ing us up to speed on what you found out with Christian Manhoff, Dr. Johnson?” Dana asked, wanting to break the heavy silence in the room even if the conversation had to be with a man who despised her as much as Johnson did. Needed some sign of life amidst all this death.

  Johnson bristled, obviously irritated at the prospect of having to explain his exact science to an ignorant layperson such as her. “Not sure what exactly there is to bring you up to speed on, Agent Whitestone,” he said gruffly, shaking his head briskly in annoyance. “Somebody shoved a large rawhide bone down Christian Manhoff’s throat and he choked to death on it. There isn’t much more to it than that.”

  Dana eyed Manhoff’s naked body. “You didn’t cut him open,’ she observed, feeling a sharp stab of irritation at what must’ve been the nine-millionth example of Johnson’s incompetence. “There could be some evidence inside of him, you know.”

  She pressed her lips together while she waited for the coroner’s reply. The comment had been made to remind Johnson of the fact that he’d failed to fully autopsy the girls in the Cleveland Slasher case the first time around – a mistake that had set back the investigation by at least three months by delaying the discovery of the plastic letters shoved inside the girls’ uteruses.

  To remind Johnson of the fact that his carelessness had cost innocent people their lives.

  “I’m doing it tonight,” Johnson said, clearly making up the lie right there on the spot.

  Dana pulled back her head on her shoulders, impressed with the guy’s moxie despite the annoyance that was still coursing so hotly through her veins. If nothing else, though, thirty long years on the job had obviously taught Johnson very well how to deal with people like her – people who seemed to exist for no other reason than to make his life more complicated.

  “I’ll call you first thing tomorrow morning and let you know if I find anything interesting, but I highly doubt I will,” the chief coroner went on. “To me, this death looks like somebody was in a great big hurry, so I wouldn’t count on finding any clever clues hidden in this one.”

  Dana nodded, but also made a mental note to call the state medical board on Johnson. Enough was enough with this jerk already. There was no way in hell he should be allowed to continue operating in the slipshod manner he did. It just wasn’t fair to the victims or their families. “Great,” she said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice but no doubt falling far short. “I’ll look forward to hearing what you have to say.”

  She paused before going on. “Anyway, I really hate to bother you any further, Dr. Johnson, but is there be any way I could also get a list of all the people who’ve worked here in the past three years? Including cleaning staff and maintenance workers? I’ll need their names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Also, any background information you might have on file would be helpful. I want to find out if anyone who’s worked here – either now or in the past – might have had a reason to attach the photograph of my brother to Christian Manhoff’s body.”

  Johnson waved his thin right arm in the air, showcasing the thick blue veins that were pulsing like tiny snakes on the back of his skeletal left hand. “I’ll have Nancy Lawson in human resources compile a list for you,” he said. “You can pick it up from the receptionist at the front desk tomorrow morning.”

  The chief coroner hesitated and furrowed his bushy eyebrows. “So, will there be anything else that you require of me, Agent Whitestone? As always, I’m at your complete and utter disposal.”

  Dana shook her head, irritated by Johnson’s flippant tone but knowing there wasn’t anything she could do about it right now. “Nope,” she said in a clipped tone that matched his perfectly. “That should just about cover it for the time being. Thank you so much for your help, Doctor. I really appreciate it. And I’ll let you know if and when I need something else from you, so please keep that in mind. Is your cellphone number still the same?”

  Johnson worked his thin lips into the semblance of a dull, gray smile, showcasing worn-down teeth set into a crooked pink gum-line that looked like concrete tombstones dotting an unkempt graveyard. “Sure is, Agent Whitestone. As a matter of fact, I even have you programmed into my contacts list. How about that for a nice surprise? Always happy to get a call from you.”

  Just then, as if on cue, Gary Templeton’s own cellphone rang in his pocket. The Cleveland cop dug it out and placed the receiver to his ear. After a moment or two, he turned down the corners of his mouth into a frown.

  Flipping shut his phone and putting it back into his pocket, he pulled back the sleeve on his trench coat to check his watch. “I’ve got to run, Dana,” he said, shaking his head and looking back up at her. “There’s been an armed robbery over at the Fifth Third Bank on Ontario Avenue. A squad car is coming to pick me up now. Chief says it’s an all-hands-on-deck type of thing. Will you be OK getting on with this on your own? I’ll call you tomorrow morning and touch base with you to see what you’ve found out.”

  Dana smiled, enjoying the feeling of knowing that someone was watching her back – the same feeling she’d had while working with Jeremy Brown before he’d been murdered in an L.A. hotel room back in May, the victim of a sixteen-year-old chess prodigy who’d shoved a sharp pair of scissors deep into his neck as revenge for Dana having failed to immediately apprehend the killers responsible for the death of the boy’s beloved mother.

  “Absolutely, Gary,” she said, making yet another mental note, this time to call Bill Krugman down in Washington, DC to let him know what was going on. The Director would probably be angry with her for setting off on this investigation without his knowledge or consent, but she’d need to worry about that later on. “I’ll talk with you tomorrow morning, Gary,” she went on. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine.”

  Templeton nodded and said his goodbyes to Johnson. Dana smiled again as she watched him walked away. Still, if she’d known then just how far off the mark she’d been with her statement about being just fine, she never would’ve left the coroner’s office alone in the first place.

  Then again, if hopes and wishes were loaves and fishes, she’d never go hungry again, right?

  CHAPTER 26

  Out in the lobby of the coroner’s office, Dana asked the woman seated behind the front desk where she might find Nancy Lawson, the human-resources person Johnson had said could compile a list of employees for her.

  It was a long shot and it would take a ton of time and energy to run background checks on all of the workers at the coroner’s office – both past and present – but Dana hoped she could talk Templeton into getting some of his underlings at the Cleveland PD to do most of the legwork. And fast. Every last second counted here, and they were already hopelessly behind schedule as it was. Most investigative leads that didn’t turn into cold-case files were usually developed within forty-eight hours after a crime had been committed – a fact known to even the most casual of viewer of the late-night police drama – and the stopwatch on that magic number had already expired two days ago.

  Dana closed her eyes briefly. Once again, just as had been the case during so many other investigations in her career, she found herself playing catch-up with her quarry. And the worst part about it was that she still didn’t have the faintest goddamn clue in the world of who her quarry even was at this point.

  “You found her,” said the woman behind the desk, a delicately pretty lady somewhere in her mid-fifties who was wearing small gold hoop earrings and a smart-looking blue blazer that matched perfectly with the soft color of her eyes. “I’m Nancy Lawson. How may I help you?”

  Dana flipped open her badge; feeling tragically underdressed in her leather bomber jacket. “I’m Special Agent Dana Whitestone,” she said. “Dr. Johnson said that he’s going to ask you to put together a list of past and present employees for me, but I wanted to ask you about something else.”

  She jerked her head up at a small camera that was mounted in a corner near the ceiling where two walls met. The camera had been trained o
n the front doors to capture on videotape everyone who entered and exited the building: a silent watcher completely incapable of lying. “How many of those things do you have around here?” Dana asked.

  Lawson turned and looked up at the camera. “Well, they’re all over the place,” she said, turning back in her seat to face Dana again. “To tell you the truth, they sort of creep me out. No matter how hard I try, I can’t help but feel like Big Brother is watching me all the time.”

  The woman shivered. “George Orwell was right when he wrote that crazy book of his, wasn’t he? Uncle Sam, Big Brother – what’s the difference these days?”

  “Is there a camera in the autopsy room?” Dana asked, not wanting to sound rude here but also wanting to speed along the conversation. She couldn’t afford to waste any more time right now with her and Templeton already in a losing race against the clock. As she’d noted earlier, every last second counted here, so she couldn’t afford to waste even a single one of them at this point. It might well turn out to be the difference between someone’s continued life and their unthinkably painful death. “I didn’t notice a camera when I was in there earlier,” Dana went on.

  Lawson nodded. “As a matter of fact, yes, there is a camera in there, Agent Whitestone. For that matter, they just replaced it not too long ago, if memory serves. Some sort of new and improved version, I guess.’

  Dana lifted her eyebrows. Bingo. Things were looking up already.

  “They did it over the Thanksgiving holiday,” Lawson continued. “They’ve got the new camera hidden pretty well in there, though. I suppose they don’t want the families to notice it when they come in to identify the bodies of their deceased relatives. Can’t blame them, can you?”