Stone's Mistake

by Adrian J. Smith

  “Better buy a lottery ticket. Today’s your lucky day.”

  Morgan grabbed the file and shoved it away. She was done talking about the murder. Fiona hadn’t sent her any more information, and it wasn’t what she needed to be focusing on. However, Fiona had her interest, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

  ###

  With a bullet proof vest strapped over her chest, Morgan kept her gun firmly in her hand. The pimp was holed up in the house in the suburbs of Wichita, there were at least a dozen girls inside that they knew of, Reilly being one of them, and quite a few more johns. Clenching her jaw, Morgan waited for the go ahead.

  SWAT was in place, FBI had its agents settled around the house, local PD joined them. The joint task force was about to make national headlines—hopefully. It had been a long drive to Wichita the morning before, but Morgan had made it gladly. They were going to take some bad people off the street, and she couldn’t be more excited.

  Her radio clicked once and then twice. It was go time. SWAT went to the front door and surrounded the house. Side doors and windows were covered. Morgan followed slightly behind them with her vest that identified who she was and gun drawn. She’d let the experts move in ahead of her and do their thing before she did hers.

  Her heart pumped wildly as she took each step. Shouts rang through the air as SWAT called forth their presence. The bangs of the entry ram at the front door shocked through her chest and reverberated down to her toes. It was two hits, and they were in.

  Screams echoed into the cool dusk air, women and men. Bullets fired. Morgan stepped forward, keeping her eyes pierced for any runners. She waited with baited breath as some women were led out and screamed at to lie down face first on the grass in the front lawn.

  Morgan gripped the zip ties at her waist, keeping her gun in one hand as she threaded the hands of the first girl through the loops and jerked it tight. “Stay here. Don’t move.”

  The girl nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She went down the line, detaining anyone who was brought out of the house. More bullets fired. Morgan dipped her head down and pushed her weapon up to aim it at the front door.

  She knew the sound was coming from inside, but without being there herself, she couldn’t see who was firing or why. Grunting, she stayed put, one knee pressing into the damp grass as it soaked through her slacks. She kept her arms firmly raised. She wasn’t going to give any of the perps a chance to shoot at her.

  It took time, but SWAT filed out of the house, one after the other with perps already restrained in front of them. One of them, Morgan recognized as Reilly’s pimp. He wasn’t the one who had taken her all those years ago, but he was the one she was bonded to.

  The captain of the SWAT team came out last. “House is clear.”

  Sneering, Morgan stood up and holstered her weapon. She let out a breath and glanced down to the girls in front of her and the men who were essentially raping them. Her heart rate slowed. Now they just had to go through the house.

  The pimps were shoved into separate vehicles to keep them apart after they’d been patted down. The girls were debriefed while Morgan strolled into the house. It was a disaster inside, not that she expected any less. Trash was strewn about, there was a heavy scent of cigarette smoke that permeated everything, and no matter how hard she tried to see, it was so dark she knew she was missing something along the way.

  Toeing her way through the living room, Morgan noted the lines of coke on the coffee table, the bags of it in the kitchen stacked high, no doubt ready to be packaged for resale. She let out a breath and headed up the stairs to the second floor. There were three bedrooms up there, each of them had housed three girls. Reilly had been given the downstairs bedroom where she and her pimp lived. No one else was allowed to touch her.

  Pushing the sickening feeling from the pit of her stomach, Morgan went into the first room. It was definitely a kid’s room. There were toys around it along with dress up clothes. The bed was unmade, but there was a stench of sex to it she tried to ignore. Letting out a short breath, Morgan squashed the sensation of bile rising from her stomach to her throat. She would not allow herself or them the courtesy of that much disgust.

  It took them another seven hours to search the house and bag all of their evidence. By the end of the night, which was really the next morning, Morgan was beat. She crawled into her bed in the hotel room, closed her eyes, and relaxed into the soft covers. She was expected in the office in the next four hours, dressed and ready to start in on the evidence collected, interrogations, and even more investigations as they continued to make connections to the higher ups in the trafficking ring.

  She just had to catch a few hours of sleep. That was all she needed.

  Morgan lay on the bed for a good two hours before she gave up. Not only had the extra coffee wired her for the night, but she couldn’t shake the images of the girls they’d taken into custody. Getting out of the bed, she sat at the small desk in the corner of the hotel room and pulled out her computer. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well make a profile for Wexford.

  She pulled out the file from her bag. Taylor wouldn’t be happy she was spending time liaising with the Chicago PD on a case that wasn’t going to end up being hers, but she wanted to do it anyway. Morgan stared at the file, full with whatever Wexford had given her. She analyzed all the evidence before she even wrote down one word of the profile for the potential murderer.

  “Man, most likely in his mid-thirties.”

  She typed it into her computer and clenched her jaw.

  “No previous criminal history.”

  Morgan pulled the picture out of the woman dead on her bed with the blanket up to her chest. She cocked her head at it and bit her lip, gnawing on the inside before she sighed.

  “Possibly romantically involved with the victim.”

  Throwing the picture onto the desk, she leaned back. This was near hopeless. She didn’t have the full case file, and it was impossible to write up a profile without one. She didn’t have forensics, and there’d been barely any time passed since the murder itself. She honestly couldn’t fathom why Fiona was insisting there was more to this than a crime of passion. Giving up, Morgan headed to the bathroom to shower and get ready for her day. She’d just get a jumpstart on her own paperwork rather than someone else’s.

  ###

  After a week in Topeka and Wichita, Morgan was done with Kansas. There’d been a storm to hit Chicago over the weekend, and she struggled to keep her car on the road as she drove back to the Chicago office two days before she’d originally planned. Taylor wanted to talk to her. Reilly was safe in custody, and her parents were coming in from Tacoma, and Pax…well, he’d jumped ship and took a plane home to see his kids sooner.

  As she crossed the border into Springfield, Illinois, glad to finally be back in her home state, her phone buzzed. Glaring at it, Morgan didn’t answer. When it rang for the fourth time, she cursed under her breath and picked it up daring it to be her mother again.

  “What?” she answered with a bite, her tone far more angry than it should have been.

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?” Fiona’s smooth voice hit her ears.

  Immediately, Morgan’s shoulders eased, and her stomach jumped with anticipation. Backtracking, she white knuckled the steering wheel and took a deep breath. “Just driving back to Chicago-land. What’s up?”

  “There’s been another murder.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. I told you I had a feeling about this one.”

  Morgan really wanted to curse, but she and Fiona didn’t have that kind of relationship yet. Keeping it professional would be best. Heaving a breath, Morgan glanced at the clock on the dash of her car. “I’ll be back in like four hours if the roads stay clear, but if they’re not—”

  “They’re not.”

  “Wonderful,” Morgan muttered. “Then it’ll be longer before I’m back. I can meet with you tomorrow at t
he crime scene if you want, but I’m going to have to let my superior officer in on what I’m doing.”

  “I don’t want you to take over this case.”

  “You might not have a choice. If there are other murders outside the state, it’s my jurisdiction.”

  “You said yourself there were no other murders.”

  Morgan snorted. “That we’ve found yet. This could very well be more than just the second one.”

  Fiona hummed. “It’s mine until I say so.”

  Clenching her jaw, Morgan steered through a pile of slush. “Sure, whatever you say. Tomorrow?”

  “I can get you in.”

  Morgan held back her retort. If she wanted in on a crime scene, she would be there without anyone holding her back. Honestly, that’d been why she’d gone with the bureau instead of becoming a local officer—that and profiling was her preferred placement.

  Realizing she hadn’t answered Fiona, Morgan cleared her throat. “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Yeah.”

  Morgan let out a breath about to hang up when Fiona’s voice caught her attention.

  “Forensics came back on the rape kit for Jenkins.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “She had sex before she was killed, we knew that.”

  “And?” Morgan sensed there was more to the story. Why she hesitated, she had no idea, but she didn’t relish staying on the phone while driving through the ends of a snowstorm any longer.

  Fiona sighed. “She had sex with a woman.”

  “No joke. That changes some things in the profile I was building for you.”

  “I thought as much.”

  “I’ll bring it with me in the morning.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Morgan hung up without saying anything else. Her mind whirred with the new information Fiona had ditched in her lap. A woman—that certainly changed things. If this person was a serial murderer and not just doing this in a crime of passion, then her whole profile would have to change.

  Building it in her head, now that she had a little more information to go on, Morgan drove the rest of the way home. By the time she got to the bureau’s office, she was warmed from the heater in her car, sore from sitting for ten plus hours, and ready to dive face first into a vat of coffee.

  Taylor waited for her as soon as she pushed through the elevator. Groaning inwardly, Morgan bypassed the coffee and went straight to his office. The verbal report she gave him was far longer than the one she’d given on the phone. They talked the ins and outs, what they could improve on next time. He nodded at her to dismiss her, and Morgan was just about to leave before she turned around.

  “Hey, actually, I may have another case that’s coming our way.”

  “Oh?” he prompted, resting in his chair with his arms folded.

  Morgan sat back down. “Week or so ago I was contacted by CPD about a murder. They wanted a second opinion, nothing more. I just got a call on my drive back there was a second one.”

  “You think it’s the same person?”

  Morgan shrugged. “I haven’t looked at the new case yet, but I plan on meeting up with CPD tomorrow to go over the crime scene and the evidence they’ve collected so far.”

  He nodded. “When?”

  “In the morning. I’ll leave Pax here. He can get a bit bullheaded if we don’t have the case yet.”

  Taylor nodded. “CPD think it’s the same person?”

  “I’m not entirely sure yet. I think they might suspect it, but I don’t know what evidence they have connecting the two.”

  “Check it out. Meanwhile, this trafficking case isn’t closed.”

  “I know. I’m still on it.”

  “This one takes priority, Stone.”

  “Got it.” She half-saluted to him before bowing out of his office and going to her own desk. She was about to spend the next five hours writing reports and working up what she could of a profile on this murderer without seeing a second crime scene. It would no doubt take her into the middle of the night.

  Chapter Six

  When she pulled up outside the address Wexford had given her, police tape still surrounded the house. She was first to arrive. There had clearly been a car parked in the driveway, but it was gone, leaving a gaping hole with no snow.

  Morgan headed up to the front door. She loved when she was the only one at crime scenes, when she could spend the time in thought. She walked from window to window peeking in. It was clear CPD had been through the house, but other than the standard search, it looked decently intact.

  “Find what you’re looking for?”

  Morgan jumped and put a hand over her heart as she spun around. “Jesus! You scared the shit out of me.”

  Fiona grinned, and Morgan’s heart skipped a beat. Her smile was near perfect. She had a little dimple to the side, but her grin was uneven, the right side pulling tighter than the left. Morgan echoed her smile and shook her head.

  “Don’t you know better than to sneak up on law enforcement?”

  “Well, I called your name. You must have been really focused on whatever you were thinking.”

  Morgan turned to the house. “Got the code? It’s still freezing out here.”

  “Yeah.” Fiona pushed the buttons on the door lock CPD had put on the house. She handed Morgan shoe covers before she donned her own and walked in. Morgan leaned against the door frame, shoving the covers over her shoes.

  Even with the door shut, it was cold. Morgan tried to avoid looking at Fiona’s ass as she walked ahead. Wexford led the way into the kitchen, and Morgan followed. “There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary except where the body was found.”

  “Which was where exactly?” Morgan peeked in the cabinets with a gloved hand, letting the doors snap shut.

  “In the bed. Body wasn’t moved.”

  “Rape kit?”

  “Done, but again, not sure if it was rape or consensual.”

  Morgan walked toward the living room. Fiona had been right, not much had been touched in the common areas. Two people had been in the house, that was clear. Morgan walked around to the other side of the couch, looking from the couch to the chair. She imagined their victim would sit on the couch with the book and the blanket strewn over her lap, and their murderer would have potentially sat in the chair. It gave them more power. They could see everything from there, what the victim was doing, outside the windows, into the kitchen, and the front door.

  “Suspecting the same woman?”

  Wexford shrugged. “I am, but my captain wants to wait until there is physical evidence to back it up.”

  Morgan grunted and pointed down the hall. “Bedroom?”

  “Yeah, this way. The knife used to stab the woman in both cases is also unaccounted for.”

  “So whoever murdered them took it.”

  Fiona nodded. “But Jenkins wasn’t stabbed to death.”

  “Oh?”

  “Strangulation and suffocation.”

  Morgan pursed her lips and nodded. She pushed the door open to what she assumed was the main bedroom. Walking in, it looked far more like an actual crime scene than the rest of the house. The bed had been stripped, but the mattress was still there and stained with blood. Drawers were pulled out and strewn on the floor.

  Fiona stopped next to her. “Most of the mess is from CSU.”

  “Wish I’d been here the other day. The body, how was it found?”

  Wexford grabbed her phone, pulled up a photo, and shifted so Morgan could look. Morgan took it from her fingers, their skin brushing and sending shockwaves up her arm. Morgan ignored it and looked at the image and walked around to the side of the bed so she could better visualize the body.

  The victim was much like the other, this time no blanket on top of her, but if she wasn’t dead, she very well could have been sleeping. Her eyes were closed, there were obvious strangulation marks on her neck, and the stab wounds to her chest were dead giveaways.

  Furrowing her brow, Morgan coun
ted. “There’s four.”

  “Four what?”

  “Stab wounds. There were three last time.”

  “Yes.”

  Morgan made a noise in the back of her throat. She handed the phone back to Wexford and stepped closer to the bed. “What’s missing from the house?”

  “Nothing really. The knife, some credit cards, probably some cash if she had any. Look, are you going to let me in on what you’re thinking or was it a total waste of time to bring you out here?”

  “She knew whoever it was,” Morgan ignored Fiona’s question.

  “The woman.”

  “If the test comes back, yes, the woman.”

  “It’s the same person.”

  Morgan sighed. “It could very well be, or it could be someone else. Did this victim have anyone in her life? A boyfriend or something?”

  “No. She was single, worked her forty hours a week, had very little life outside of that. She wasn’t a busy body like Jenkins.”

  “So how did they meet?”

  “What?” Fiona’s voice was sharp.

  Morgan closed her eyes. “How did they meet? Where’s the connection? If it’s the same killer, how are the victims chosen?”

  “You can’t deny that these cases are similar.”

  “I’m not.” Morgan put her hands out. They’d reached the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. “I’m not denying these cases are similar, but there’s a severe lack of connection between them, lack of evidence.”

  “I’m working on it,” Fiona growled, her face set in anger.

  “I know. I know you are. These things take time. If this is the same killer, and we are assuming it is the woman who had sex with Jenkins prior to her murder and sex with this victim, then we also have a type. Middle-aged, brunette women who live alone.”

  Fiona bopped her head from side to side. “They both also wouldn’t have been found for weeks.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jenkins had a tree fall on her duplex. The victim here, Andrea Phillips, had a scheduled maid service yesterday—which was only scheduled monthly. The worker found her.”

  “Some shit morning for that job.”