Drop Dead Perfect

by Rick Murcer

  Shifting away from her, he freed her hand and gently adjusted the tiara resting on her head.

  He would have released her back to the world to sort out her dysfunctional personality if she’d answered his question correctly. Telling him that he was the true love of her life had only confirmed her ability to lie. And that simply wouldn’t do. Truth was paramount in any relationship, and he suspected that was something she had never understood. She had played him.

  Well, she’d tried.

  The anger flared again, and this time, he basked in it for a few moments. It made him feel alive. In control. Real. Indulging in a moment of self-awareness wasn’t the end of the world. After all, he had feelings, too. Didn’t he?

  Holly hadn’t been “the one” who would satisfy his quest to live the next fifty years with the same woman. So be it. The search would continue.

  “Drop-dead perfect awaits,” he whispered.

  Leaning over, he kissed her.

  “Good-bye, sweet Holly.”

  He got out of the SUV and walked around to the other side. After scanning the area for the fourth time, he was satisfied that no one was near. He whisked her from the seat and walked her over to the trunk of the large maple tree fifteen feet from the service road leading away from Lake Shore Drive. More like carried her. She was in no position to walk, now was she?

  When he laid her gently under the tree, her head dropped slowly forward. He returned it to a more natural position. Just because her neck had been broken didn’t mean he couldn’t ensure that she embodied perfect beauty when she was found. It was the least he could do.

  After he’d positioned her just the way he wanted, he removed the sign from his pocket, unfolded it, and then taped it to her considerable bosom.

  “NOT HER”

  That was right. The eternal lover he sought wasn’t Holly. But that woman was out there, was she not?

  He felt his excitement grow as he returned to the truck and drove away. He could hardly wait to get back to Joannie Carmen.

  He had much to discover about her. For both their sakes.

  Kyle Black grinned as he turned onto Lake Shore Drive.

  Much, indeed.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Ellen! Imagine running into you, here of all places,” said Joel.

  As if she were thrown into a time warp, all the memories of their relationship came flooding back to her. When they’d first met, their wedding day, the lovemaking, the apartment shopping, the wonderful dinners, and late-night excursions seeking chocolate desserts. Followed immediately by the haunting image of his gutless text telling her he wanted something different and was leaving.

  The court proceedings reran in her mind like an old movie. She heard him saying how incompatible they’d become and how she worked too much. She wasn’t there for him anymore. The resounding bang of the gavel on the judge’s bench as she declared the divorce final was the final memory.

  She was still angry, but at least she wasn’t going to shoot him. Maybe.

  “Joel. What are you doing here?” she asked, squeezing the six-pack tighter.

  “Just getting dinner.”

  He started to bend toward her, to kiss her on the forehead, a habit she used to enjoy.

  Ellen stepped away. “Don’t even think about it. You’re lucky I don’t deck you again, or worse.”

  When he moved back himself, she saw momentary fear on his face. “Sorry. It was reflex. It’s just good to see you, that’s all.”

  “Good to see me? Where’s your twenty-seven-year-old wench?”

  Joel looked to the ceiling, biting his lip. “She isn’t a wench. Her name is Nikki.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “She, well . . . She went back to her boyfriend, okay? Are you happy?” he said, tight lipped.

  Happy? What a strange word coming from his mouth.

  She put the six-pack on the floor before she gave in to the dark side and hit him with it. “Look. You ruined my life for over a year. Nothing about that was happy, dumb-ass. You made your choice and I had to live with it. Now you have to live with it, too.”

  “I know. I made a mistake. I—”

  Any remnants of control buckled when she heard mistake. She had lived through a hellish divorce because he made a mistake?

  Her knee to his groin finished their conversation.

  As he kneeled on the floor, moaning, she whispered into his ear, “Don’t talk to me again, ever.”

  Ellen picked up the six-pack and moved to the counter. She handed the stunned clerk thirty dollars.

  “Sorry about the mess on the floor,” she said.

  “Ahh, no problem. We get those once in a while,” said the clerk, winking.

  Ellen returned to the car, turned off the flashing lights, and pulled away, unable to wipe the smile from her face.

  As she drove north, she began to laugh through the tears. “Mistake that, Joel,” she said out loud.

  There is nothing like confronting the source of your misery and coming out on top, at least for the moment.

  Driving a few more blocks, she regained her focus as she turned onto Roosevelt. She shoved Joel out of her mind and reset her thoughts toward her job. She had more important things to do than think about Joel’s “mistake” today.

  She parked in the lot just outside of the centralized forensics lab and hurried up the steps to the secured front entrance. Ellen’s insides jumped with excitement as she hit the numbers on the keypad and entered her kingdom.

  This building had been far more than a place of employment even before she’d gone through the divorce. It was as if she’d been born to do this work.

  Ellen removed the cell phone from her pocket, slid off her leather jacket, and then entered the main lab. She pulled on her lab coat—the one with her name stitched in red—then stepped onto the main laboratory floor. She closed her eyes. The smell of chemicals used in evidence processing took her to another place. Her place. It felt like a homecoming and, as her fellow techs often joked, she was the queen.

  Lab rats, like herself, embraced the very essence of the processes of science. Always anticipating the result of a test that might help capture a killer or, better yet, save a life.

  Working the field had its pluses, including the thrill of tackling a new investigation with the intent of putting together a preliminary theory . . . That, and sunlight. But nothing matched the lab environment for her. Theories were theories, and facts were facts. Theories had no restrictions, but were prone to errors, misreads, and misunderstandings. Facts were reliable. Both were needed to solve crimes, but she preferred the facts.

  “Of course I do,” she said out loud.

  Walking through the hallway toward her office, kit in hand, she noticed only a few techs working. First shift had gone home except for a few techs working OT to help ease the backlog. The late shift didn’t start until nine. Good. Quiet time for her.

  She sat down in her office, cleared away some paperwork from the old oak desk, and put the phone in the open space. She pulled open her kit and placed several bags of potential evidence removed from Clara’s body, clothing, and shoes next to her PC.

  Ellen exhaled. This was it? This was all she had to help locate Clara’s killer? A life in exchange for six bags of trace evidence and a cell phone? It didn’t seem like a fair trade.

  Oscar would show up later with the dirt and whatever else he’d been able to glean from the area. But this wasn’t her first rodeo, and the chances of finding anything viable in an outdoor environment were minuscule at best.

  She reached for her desk phone and called the area of the lab used for the processing of fibers and DNA. A tech answered, and Ellen told her she had priority evidence to process.

  A few minutes later the tech entered wearing a bright orange frock. She was a young, short, stout woman named Sheil
a.

  “I don’t care what you’re working on, I need these fibers and samples processed, identified, and categorized against the databases ASAP, clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Is this from the body found in the park?” asked Sheila.

  “It is, so get to it.”

  Ellen put on fresh gloves to open the dirty plastic bag and began the painstaking process of withdrawing Clara’s cell.

  Standing, she moved to the table running along the south wall of her office and switched on the lighted magnifying glass. After placing the bag on the pad underneath the light, she studied the phone and the bag completely. To the naked eye, there didn’t appear to be any fibers or trace evidence, but she’d have the inside of the bag analyzed as well.

  Slowly, she reached in and pulled the phone from the bag, carefully monitoring every detail of the extraction process.

  She placed the phone on the white cloth beside the pad and again searched for trace particles. Once satisfied that the phone was clean, she returned to her desk.

  Ellen pulled out the fingerprinting case and began what she suspected was a fruitless endeavor, dusting the phone anyway.

  She was right: it had been wiped completely clean. The front, back, and sides of the iPhone showed no inkling of a print.

  Sitting back in her chair, she exhaled. She’d been right about this killer’s purpose and intellect. A smart psychopath always meant trouble for the cops and the unfortunate victims.

  They’d request phone records, of course, and any tower location information associated with Clara’s phone, but she thought that might all be fruitless, as well. She didn’t think this killer would be caught so easily. She suspected that the GPS chip had probably already been removed.

  “Only one way to find out,” she said.

  She picked the fingernail file from her pencil holder, turned the phone over, and removed the back. She could see right away that the light green GPS antenna had been removed. No surprise. She thought about dusting for prints, but thought better of it for now. There wasn’t a chance in Hell of finding any. There might be photos to review, and maybe something like a text could help her locate the perp.

  She powered on the phone. It had about fifteen percent battery life, but that would be enough.

  The killer hadn’t taken any chances. The phone was on “Airplane” mode and the “Emergency Only” option had been enabled. Smart.

  She would have done the same thing just to make sure the phone couldn’t be tracked.

  As she turned to the photo icon on the screen, her own phone went off and she jumped.

  Quickly pulling the phone from her jeans pocket, she saw the number and swore.

  She’d forgotten to call Kate and cancel dinner. It would be better to face the music now than later.

  “Hey, Kate.”

  “Hi, Ellie. We’re just sittin’ at our booth over at Carrigan’s Pub waitin’ on ya. Are ya working? If not, you’re late and me and George are hungry.”

  “Yeah, I am. We have a bad one and I need to be in the lab.”

  “Is that the one George told me about, in Jackson Park? That woman found on the park bench?” asked Kate

  “Yes. How did you find out so fast?”

  “Oh, George has given in to the Devil’s devices and was checkin’ out his Bookface page or whatever.”

  “Facebook, Kate.”

  “Like I said, whatever. Me and Pearl and Mable don’t need that stuff and God, sure as the wind, don’t neither. It’s all I could do to use this here phone.”

  Ellen had no choice but to smile. Kate held three things closer to her than her husband, George: her Bible and her two guns. Everyone needs an anchor. God was hers—as were the two handguns she wore strapped to her shoulders. One, a Glock 19 pistol with a customized fourteen-shot magazine and “MABLE” engraved on each side of the grip, was holstered on her right. On her left rested a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum 686 with a six-inch barrel and custom pearl handles. Pearl was her favorite, and that’s why it was near her heart.

  Kate was big on faith, but thought folks should be ready to help themselves if necessary. Thus, Mable and Pearl were added to the family.

  It was also why Kate and George owned the large gun shop, Loaded Kate’s, on Lincoln. She felt it was her duty to help everyone protect themselves from “this perverted world,” as she called it.

  “You might be right about the tech world, Kate, but it also helps me solve crimes.”

  “Pffft. You could do just fine without that Internet junk. It’s demon-possessed, ya know.”

  “We can talk more about this later, Kate. I’ve got to get back to work. I’m sorry. I owe you and George one, okay?”

  “Sure, darling. We’ll miss ya, but I get it. At least we won’t have to listen to Oscar whine about us eatin’ a big ol’ rare T-bone steak.”

  “That’s true,” said Ellen, laughing.

  “Okay then, you get back to work, and I’m going to head into the bathroom for some heavy-duty praying for you and the rest of the CPD.”

  “Thanks, Kate. That never hurts.”

  “No, it doesn’t and I’m glad to do it. Take care and call your old friend if you need anything.”

  “I will. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  She hung up and immediately thought how lucky she’d been to meet her self-proclaimed surrogate mother.

  No matter how different their opinions could be, she and Kate hit it off from the first day Ellen had walked into the gun shop. After her mom had died, the woman had filled a void that not even Big Harv could. She’d always be grateful for that.

  Kate epitomized the saying regarding good friends and wine.

  “Get back to work, Ellie,” she said to herself.

  After sliding her finger across the screen to access Clara’s phone, Ellen touched the message icon and saw nothing. It had been wiped clean. Not a surprise. She would have done the same thing. They would have to wait on the phone records to arrive to see what had been deleted.

  She opened the phone history and got the same blank screen. The killer was as thorough and detailed as his initial actions indicated.

  Sliding her thumb up to the photos icon, she pressed the button and stared. The picture of Clara in the chair was the first one on the screen, followed by a few similar shots.

  These images went past personal, past appalling. This killer wanted to shock the CPD, or could it be that he was a total perfectionist and wanted to get the best shot possible?

  There were several more pictures where the killer seemed to be trying to get a feel for the camera and a few pictures that she thought were taken by Clara, including a couple photos at Navy Pier.

  She leaned back in her chair, shaking her head. This was one sick bastard. They had to get a handle on this case, now. There was no doubt the perp was going to kill again.

  Just as she reached for Clara’s cell again to see if she’d missed anything, her phone rang a second time.

  Brice. It was far too soon for him to ask about results. Damn it.

  “Yes?” She could feel the dread in her own voice.

  “We’ve got another body, Ellie. This killer is escalating his agenda.”

  Her mind went numb. A second? Already?

  “Where?”

  “I texted you and Oscar the address.”

  “On the way,” she managed.

  Rushing out the office door, she thought about Kate praying for them. If this killer was on a spree, they were going to need all the prayers they could muster.

  CHAPTER 11

  Ellen leaned against the back of the SUV and looked at her watch. It was past midnight; she’d been up since six a.m. and felt like it. It wasn’t only the hours out of the sack. One case involving the bizarre and psychotic was enough for a lifetime, but two in the same day, apparently by the same killer, was over the
top even for a Chicago cop’s daughter.

  She stared at the printed paper in her hand, another “NOT HER” sign. She’d pulled it from the victim’s dress, fighting her anger, yes, but it was difficult to ward off the sadness, too. Two young women gone, for reasons known only to the killer. This murderer was the kind you prayed you never ran into during your career.

  So much for that.

  Turning, she watched the ME’s ambulance, loaded with Holly Seabrook’s body, curve down the service road, switch on its red-and-white lights, and move slowly away. Too slowly. The lack of urgency drove the point home succinctly.

  Yet another senseless homicide in a world that considered killing one another business as usual, not only in this country, but in her city, too. Her anger rose high. According to her profile, Holly had been twenty-eight years old and a rising star in the banking world. The young woman was gorgeous, even in death. She no doubt had been looking forward to a long and wonderful future.

  Ellen exhaled and sipped her mocha latte. She remembered what that was like, right? The joy, the anticipation, the challenge of building your future, maybe even with someone you loved. That no longer possible for Holly. Instead, she’d been murdered and dumped in a soggy plot of land that reeked of industrial waste. Hell of a trade-off for the young woman.

  Her thoughts wandered toward the case that had obsessed Big Harv—almost as much today as it had twenty-six years ago. Though he tried to conceal his preoccupation with the murders that had changed him, she was beginning to understand that cloaked obsession. She was desperate to rid herself of the terrible feeling that crept into her mind when working cases like this. The actions of a killer like this one could take root deep inside, where those sacred, protected places of human decency and respect reside, and twist those values into a medium of hate and revenge—if you let them.