Quince cleared his throat, as if preparing to give a speech. “He attacks from behind, delivering a blow to the victim’s head. Neither woman has any idea what she was struck with. The pathologist looked at photos of their wounds and said it was something smooth and cylindrical, like a flashlight or a heavy pipe.”
“Were they knocked unconscious?”
“Not at first. Just hurt and stunned enough for the guy to get a jump on them.” Quince rifled though a stack of notes ripped from various tablets. Jackson thought Quince had good potential as an investigator, but disorganization could get in his way.
Quince continued, “The first victim, Keesha Williams, was struck twice in the head, then the guy pushed her down on the floor, ripped her blouse off, and tied it around her face so she couldn’t see him.”
“Could she describe anything about him?”
“She said he seemed average, not noticeably large, but very strong. She thought he smelled like a smoker.” Quince glanced at his notes, looking for more detail. “His voice seemed young. That’s all I got from Williams, age twenty-six.”
“We’ll get back to her. Tell me about the second attack.”
“Amy Hastings was jogging on the path around Amazon Park around 9:30 p.m. She heard someone behind her, then she was hit in the head. Twice. Then the guy pulled a pillowcase over her head, dragged her into the bushes, and raped her. He punched and kicked her repeatedly and told her not to move for five minutes or he’d kill her.”
“So he brought the pillowcase with him?”
Quince nodded. “Improving his technique with the second strike.”
“And her attack sounds more violent.”
“Definitely. His anger is escalating.”
“Where was the first victim attacked?”
“In her home. He came in through an unlocked back door.”
“How far apart on the dates?”
“Three weeks. And it’s been two weeks since the last one.”
There was a moment of silence as they both realized the perpetrator was likely to strike at any moment.
“Were these women random choices or do they have something in common?”
Quince looked distressed. “That’s the critical question, and I don’t have a good answer. Both victims had attended Lane Community College in the past, but weren’t students there anymore.”
“I want to talk to both victims. Will you set up interviews for me? As soon as possible?”
“I will. But the grapevine says you already have a suspect in custody for your homicide.”
“There are some potential kinks in the scenario.” Jackson squeezed his forehead, a habit he’d recently become aware of. “Was either of your rape victims penetrated with an object?”
Quince raised an eyebrow. “Amy Hastings said he used something on her. She doesn’t know what it was. “
“Why does he use an object? Because he has trouble with erections?” Jackson was thinking out loud, not really expecting an answer.
“Maybe it’s more about punishing the women than having sex.”
“It usually is. Any trace evidence?”
“We have DNA. The nurse who does the rape exams at the hospital found trace amounts of semen on both victims.” Quince seemed a little puzzled. “ It’s as if the perp used a condom, but not effectively. The two DNA samples match each other, but not anyone in the database.”
“So we just have to find him and test him and we’ll get a conviction. Where do you think we should look?”
“Lane Community College is the one place the victims shared.”
The campus was a starting place—a very broad starting place, with thousands of potential male suspects of all ages and types, but it gave Jackson a database to sift through. He sensed that the rapist selected and stalked his victims, but how were they chosen? “Did these women share any physical characteristics?”
“None. They were different ages, different sizes, had different hair color, different occupations. The college was the only connection I could find. I tried to get a warrant to search LCC’s student files but Judge Volcansek turned it down.”
“Work with the DA’s office to rewrite it,” Jackson suggested. “Then give it to Judge Cranston.” Jackson sensed there was something more in the rape files, something overlooked. He’d missed important information once or twice himself. “Do me a favor and type up all your notes, then print them out for me. There may be something there that meshes with my homicide.” He checked his watch: 10:15 a.m. Why hadn’t Mariah Martin called?
“Thanks, Quince. We won’t merge these cases yet, but let’s keep each other in the loop. And get back to me with interview times as soon as you can.”
Jackson headed back to his desk to call Josh’s caseworker. He needed to talk to the boy before he interrogated Gorman again. Gorman had been transferred to the county jail and booked on possession charges. He probably had an arraignment this afternoon.
Mariah Martin’s phone rang six times before she picked up. “Good morning, Detective Jackson.”
Her cheerfulness made him leery. “Can you bring Josh in now?”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. He’s not ready.”
Jackson bit his lip to keep from swearing. “Do you realize how important this is? I need solid evidence that Raina was in the Gormans’ home the night of her murder. It’s the only way I’ll get Bruce Gorman to talk.”
“I understand. I really do. Raina was a wonderful person, and I want this bastard put away.”
Jackson clenched his jaw and waited for the ‘but’.
“But Josh won’t even talk to me right now. So I’m trying to contact our in-house psychologist to set up some counseling and to arrange for Josh to return to his foster parents. He needs to know where he’s going to wake up tomorrow and the next day.”
Jackson struggled to accept the idea that he wouldn’t get what he wanted. “Can you ask him for me? One simple question: Did Raina come to their house Wednesday night?”
Martin laughed a little. “You’re rather tenacious. And I will help you. I just can’t promise when. Goodbye for now, Detective.”
Shit. He tried not to hate the woman. She was just doing her job.
Jackson had a few minutes before the taskforce was scheduled to meet. He called his friend Ed Stevens in the Portland FBI office. Stevens’ voice mail picked up so Jackson left a message: “It’s Wade Jackson. I’ve got a rapist who beats his victims, covers their heads, and sometimes uses an object in the assault, maybe a vibrator. I need a profile, if you have time. Call me.”
The next call was harder, but politics demanded it. Sergeant Lammers picked up almost immediately. “Jackson, tell me something I want to hear.”
Sometimes it annoyed him that caller ID announced his name before he could, but he hated when other people hid behind ‘private call’. So he refused to list himself that way. “I have a suspect in custody.”
“Good work. Who is he?”
“Bruce Gorman, the meth-head father of a boy that Raina, the victim, was monitoring through the CSA program.”
“She was a CSA volunteer?” Lammers practically groaned.
“Yep.”
“Damn. I hope the bureaucrats don’t overreact and shut down the program.”
That hadn’t occurred to Jackson. He debated whether to tell her about the possible link to the rape cases, then decided to wait.
“What have you got on him?” Lammers wanted to know.
Good question. “Nothing solid yet. But the victim was on her way to Gorman’s house, and he has a history of violence against women. I’m hoping the boy will tell us that Raina was there.”
“That’s weak, Jackson. Call me when you have some evidence.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jackson took another minute to order pizza for the meeting. During the first week of a tough case, he often ate nothing but junk food and still lost weight. It was the infrequency of meals combined with the high caloric burn of round-the-clock inten
sity.
He was five minutes early going in, but Quince, Evans, and Schakowski were already in the conference room. Quince hadn’t been up all night and Evans wore her bright-eyed Provigil face, so Schak was the only one with a puffy-eyed hangover look. Besides himself. Jackson avoided coming into contact with mirrors during the first two days of an investigation. Lack of sleep made him look like a suspect.
“I’ve got pizza coming, so no whining about a noon meeting.”
“La Perla’s?”
“Of course.” Jackson took a seat. “Evans, will you keep the board?” He turned to Schak. “Anything to report from the houses on the hill?”
“Nothing. Except for the woman who called in about the Volvo.”
“Evans, tell us about your interview with Jamie, the victim’s friend.”
Evans faced the board and looked back over her shoulder as she talked and made notes. “Jamie is twenty, lives with her parents, and is also a CSA volunteer like Raina. She and Jamie went to high school together. Jamie has taken classes at LCC, but isn’t a student there now. I got all this from her parents. Jamie was too upset to provide much information.”
“What did you learn about Raina?” Jackson asked. “We need to document everything we know about her, so Quince can compare his victims with ours. We need to figure out if these cases are related.”
Evans started a list on the dry-erase board: Raina Hughes, age 20, CSA volunteer, Lane Community College student. She turned back to the others. “What else?”
“Her mother was a drug addict who died seven years ago,” Jackson reported. “Despite that troubled past, Raina was a good student with no bad habits, says Grandma.” He turned to Schak. “There was a collection of blankets and things in the trunk of her car. Find out if she came into direct contact with homeless men.”
Evans wrote hurriedly to catch up.
mother/dead drug addict
no bad habits
charity work
direct contact with homeless?
Jackson shook his head, surprised by the picture that was emerging. “Raina seems to be quite a success story.”
Evans looked back at the group. “I just remembered that Jamie said Raina was unpredictable and that sometimes she wouldn’t see her for days.”
“That could be important. Maybe she had a secret boyfriend.” Jackson turned to Quince. “Anything in this profile look familiar?”
“Just the community college. But the rape victims were no longer students.” Quince glanced down at his notes. “Keesha Williams earned a two-year degree as a dental assistant in 2006, and Amy Hastings attended in 2007 and took mostly creative writing classes.”
Evans made a line down the middle of the board and started listing the rape victims’ profiles on the right. Jackson still thought Gorman had likely killed Raina, but if there was a connection between these cases, this was the best way to see it. Maybe Gorman was also their rapist.
The door pushed open and Victor Slonecker, the district attorney, strode in, late as usual but perfectly groomed. He flashed a sincere smile. “Sorry to be late. Don’t backtrack for me. I’ll catch up.”
Jackson knew how this would go. He turned to Quince. “What else?”
Quince shifted and frowned at his notes. “When I typed it all up, I was surprised by how little I knew about each woman.” He shook his head. “But here’s what I have. Williams is African American and lives alone in a condo off Timberline in southwest Eugene. She works as a dental assistant for Bailey Hill Family Dental, which is not far from her house. The rapist came into her home through an unlocked back door and attacked her in the kitchen. She was listening to her iPod and didn’t hear him.”
“You’re talking about the unsolved rape cases? Was the homicide victim raped?” This was how Slonecker got caught up. “I thought you had a suspect in custody.”
“We do have a suspect,” Jackson said, “but all we have that ties him to the victim, so far, is association and proximity. Raina was also raped, so we’re exploring the possibility that her homicide was committed by the serial rapist.”
Slonecker nodded, then caught Jackson with his intense dark eyes. “Any surprises? Is the suspect anyone I should care about?” The DA was on a career path toward state attorney general and didn’t intend to let anyone else’s mistakes derail him. Last fall’s murdered schoolgirls case and its high-profile killer were still generating political fallout, so Slonecker was a little paranoid now.
“No, sir. Gorman is just another loser meth addict,” Jackson said. He turned to Quince. “Tell us about Amy Hastings.”
Quince gave them a brief run-down. “She’s twenty-two and lives near the University of Oregon in a house she shares with two other women. She works nights as a bartender at the Black Forest and spends her days writing. She was attacked on the Amazon jogging path on a Monday evening, three weeks after Williams was raped.”
The pizza arrived, so they took a break and ate the thick slices without benefit of a table or plates. It wasn’t pretty. Between bites, Jackson outlined for Slonecker everything they’d found at the scene where Raina’s body had been left. The DA asked a few cursory questions, then hurried out on his way to another meeting. Jackson felt uncomfortably full, so he put down his third piece of pizza and decided to wrap up.
“Evans, find out everything you can about Raina. Talk to her grandmother and her friends. Find out if she ever saw a counselor. I’ll interview the rape victims, then we’ll compare notes.” He turned to Schak. “Check in with the evidence techs. I want to know about the flat tire, when and why it happened. See if they found anything interesting in the car.”
“Anything for me?” Quince wanted to know.
“Pull together your list of rape suspects with a brief profile for each and e-mail it to me.”
“Will do.”
When Jackson stood, his chest tightened in a painful squeeze. The sensation passed as quickly as it came. This was becoming a pattern with stressful cases when he consumed too much caffeine and didn’t get enough sleep. He’d been working on lowering his cholesterol, but clearly that wasn’t enough.
“Are you okay?” Evans asked
“Peachy.”
Jackson went back to his desk, thinking he would call Stevens in the Portland FBI office again, then head over to the jail and interrogate Gorman one more time. As he dialed, he saw Quince making his way through the roomful of cluttered desks toward him. He hung up and waited.
“Amy Hastings called back,” Quince announced. “She says if you want to talk to her, you have to do it now because she’s leaving in the morning. She’s going to Seattle to stay with her sister for a while.” Quince’s brow furrowed. “I feel like I failed her.”
“It’s not over yet. We’ll get him.” Jackson stood and grabbed his coat. “What’s the address?”
The hundred-year-old house near 19th and Patterson looked much like all the other student dwellings in the neighborhood: bicycles chained to the front porch, empty beer bottles under the bushes, and a PEACE sign in the front window.
When Jackson opened the screen door, it came loose from the hinges. Before he could knock on the wooden door, it flew open and a young woman looked at him, then turned and yelled, “The cop is here.” She spun back around and grinned. “Hi, I’m Tara.” He guessed her age at about twenty, but it was hard to tell with her boyishly short hair and no makeup.
Another young woman came down the stairs and stood timidly in the middle of the living room, shoulders hunched forward as if she were cold. The shadow of a bruise darkened one side of her face. “Amy Hastings?”
“Yes, come in.” She didn’t move.
Jackson stepped in and recoiled from the smell of incense. He looked around for the right place to have this painful conversation.
“Let’s go to the kitchen,” Amy suggested. She moved suddenly and Jackson followed. Amy waited and pulled the sliding pocket door closed behind him before they sat down at a cluttered table. She chewed on a fingernail a
s she waited for Jackson to speak. The girl was frail, five foot five and about a hundred pounds with the boots. Her ash-blond hair was chin length and her blue eyes were weary and awash with pain. Jackson reminded himself not to think of her as a girl. She was twenty-two, an adult.
“Amy, I know this is hard to talk about, so I’m going to focus on two things.” Jackson unconsciously held out two fingers as he talked. “First I want you to tell me everything you remember about your attacker. Then I want to know everything about your daily routine. Where you go and what you do.”
Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For Page 6
