Waking Nightmare

by Kylie Brant

  It was a troubling memory, but not the one that kept him awake nights.

  There was a loud burst of laughter as the suits expressed their appreciation of Dixon’s humor, which, Ryne had reason to know, could be politically incorrect and crudely clever.

  “Excuse me for a moment.” Dixon clapped the two closest men on the shoulders. “I need to speak to one of my detectives.” The crowd on the stairwell parted for him like a sea before a prophet.

  “Detective Robel.” He flashed his pearly caps. “Here to thank me?”

  “I appreciate the extra person assigned to the task force.” Whatever their past, whatever had gone between them, Ryne always maintained a scrupulously professional relationship with the man in public. “But I’m not sure bringing in an outsider is going to be as much use to us as another department investigator would be.”

  Annoyance flickered in the man’s eyes. “Didn’t you read her qualifications? Phillips has background unmatched by anyone on the force. You’ve heard of Raiker Forensics, haven’t you? They’re better known as The Mindhunters, because of Adam Raiker’s years in the fed’s behavioral science unit. The training in his agency is top-notch. With the addition of Phillips, we’re getting a profiler and an investigator, for the price of one.”

  “Price.” They descended the stairs in tandem. “Resources are limited, the last interdepartment memo said. Seems odd to spend them on an outside ‘consultant’ when we have cops already on the payroll who could do the same work at no additional cost.”

  Although he’d tried to maintain a neutral tone, Dixon’s expression warned him that he hadn’t been entirely successful. The man glanced around as if to see who was within hearing distance and lowered his voice, all the while keeping a genial smile pasted on his face. “You don’t have to worry about the finances of this department, Detective, that’s my job. Yours is to track down and nail this scumbag raping women in our city. If you’d accomplished that by now, I wouldn’t have had to bring someone else in, would I?”

  The barb found its mark. “We’ve made steady progress . . .”

  “Don’t forget that my ass is on the line right along with yours. Mayor Richards has had me on speed dial since the second rape.”

  Already knowing it was futile, Ryne said, “Okay, how about adding another person to the task force in addition to Phillips? Marlowe out of the fourth precinct would be a good man, and he’s got fifteen years experience.”

  They came to the base of the steps and stopped. The suits were standing a little ways off and, judging by the looks they kept throwing them, were growing impatient.

  Dixon’s words reflected the same emotion. “You wanted another person assigned; you got her. Work with the task force you’ve got, Detective. I need results to report to the chief. Get me something to take to him.” His gaze moved to the men waiting for him. “Have you verified the connection between this latest assault and the others?” Ryne had updated Dixon and Captain Brown before the briefing this morning.

  “I’ve got CSU at the scene. My men are on their way over.”

  “Good.” It was clear he’d lost Dixon’s attention. “Let me know when you get something solid.”

  Ryne made sure none of the anger churning in his gut showed on his face as the commander walked away. Keeping the mayor happy would have been the driving motivation behind Dixon’s hiring an outside consultant. The second victim had been the mayor’s granddaughter, a college student snatched on her way to work and driven to her grandparents’ beach home where the attack had taken place. The man had an understandable thirst for results, and Dixon’s hiring of Phillips was only the latest offering. Assigning another department investigator to the case wasn’t as dazzling as putting a profiler to work on it, especially one affiliated with Adam Raiker, a man practically martyred for the Bureau some years back.

  At least he hoped he’d read Dixon’s intentions correctly. Ryne turned and headed back to the conference room. He sincerely hoped the man was just playing his usual style of suck-up politics and not engaged in a cover-your-ass strategy, designed to leave his image untarnished if this case went bad.

  Because if that were the situation, Ryne knew exactly who’d be left twisting in the wind.

  When Detective Robel reentered the room, Abbie could tell that his mood had taken a turn for the worse. It wasn’t evident from his expression. But temper had his spine straight, his movements taut with tension. “Let’s go,” he said abruptly.

  Without a word, she got up and followed him out the door. He made no effort to check the length of his strides. She almost had to run to keep up with him, a fact that didn’t endear him to her. He stopped at one cubicle and dropped the folder containing her personnel information on the desk, then picked up a fat accordion file sitting on its corner.

  “Here.” He shoved it at Abbie. “You can catch up on the case on the way.”

  On the way where? To the scene? To the victim? She decided she wasn’t going to ask. His disposition had gone from guardedly polite to truculent, and it didn’t take much perception to recognize that she was the cause for the change. His attitude wasn’t totally unprecedented. He wouldn’t be the first detective to resent her presence on his team, at least initially. In her experience, cops were notoriously territorial.

  Rather than trotting at his heels like a well-trained dog, Abbie kept the detective in sight as she followed him out of the building and down the wide stone steps. Almost immediately, her temples dampened. Though barely noon and partly overcast, the humidity index had to be hovering close to ninety percent, making her question how the majority of her assignments just happened to be located in walking saunas like Savannah. Houston. Miami.

  The answer, of course, was the job. Everything she did was dictated by it. If there was room in her life for little else, that was a conscious choice. And one she’d yet to regret.

  Robel paused at the bottom of the steps as if just remembering she was accompanying him and threw an impatient look over his shoulder. Unhurriedly, she caught up, and they headed toward the police parking lot.

  “Do you have any experience with victim interviews?” he asked tersely. “I want to talk to Billings before I stop by the scene.”

  “Yes.”

  “Follow my lead when we get there. We’ve developed a survey of questions I’ll lead her through. If you have anything to add afterwards, feel free.”

  He led her to an unmarked navy Crown Vic, unlocked it. She slid in the passenger side while he continued around the vehicle to the other door. Before following her into the car, he shrugged out of his muted plaid suit coat, revealing a light blue short-sleeved shirt crisscrossed by a shoulder harness. He laid the suit jacket over the seat between them as he got in.

  “I’m never going to get used to this weather.” He slid her a glance as he backed the car out of the slot. “How do you stand wearing long sleeves like that in the middle of summer?”

  “Superior genes.” Ignoring his snort, she spilled the contents from the file he’d given her onto her lap. Flipping through the neatly arranged photos and reports, she noted they were sorted chronologically beginning with the first incident reported three months earlier.

  She looked at the detective. “So if this latest victim turns out to be related to the others, she’ll be the . . . what? Fourth?”

  Ryne pulled to a stop at a stoplight. “That’s right. And she’s almost certainly related. He’s injecting them with something prior to the attacks, and they all describe the same effects—initial tingling of the lips and extreme muscle weakness. It turns the victims’ memories to mush, which means they haven’t been able to give us squat when it comes to details about the attacker. From the descriptions they give, it also does something to intensify sensation.”

  “Maybe to increase the pain from the torture,” she murmured, struck by a thought. If that were the actual intent, rather than just hazing the memory or incapacitating the victim, it would be in keeping with a sadistic rapist.

 
; The hair on the nape of her neck suddenly prickled, and it wasn’t due to the tepid air blasting from the air-conditioning vents. The atmosphere in the vehicle had gone charged. She slanted a look at Robel, noted the muscle working in his jaw.

  “What do you know about the torture?”

  Feeling like she was stepping on quicksand, she said, “Commander Dixon told me a little about the case when we discussed my joining the task force.”

  “This morning?”

  “On the phone yesterday afternoon.”

  The smile that crossed his lips then was chilly and completely devoid of humor. He reached for a pair of sunglasses secured to the visor, flipped them open, and settled them on his nose.

  Irritation coursed through her. “Something about that amuses you?”

  “Yeah, it does. Considering the fact that the last time I asked Dixon for another investigator”—she didn’t miss the inflection he gave the last word—“was yesterday morning, I guess you could say it’s funny as hell.”

  Abbie stifled the retort that rose to her lips. She was more familiar than she’d like with the ego massage necessary in these situations, though she’d never developed a fondness for the need. “Look, let’s cut through the unpleasantries. I have no intention of muscling in on your case. Since I was hired by Dixon, I have to provide him with whatever information he requests of me. But my role is first and foremost to assist you.”

  His silence, she supposed, was a response of sorts. Just not the one she wanted. Her annoyance deepened. According to Commander Dixon, Robel was some sort of hotshot detective, some very big deal from—Philadelphia? New York? Some place north anyway. But as far as she could tell, he was just another macho jerk, of a type she was all too familiar with. Law enforcement was full of them. Departments could mandate so-called sensitivity training, but it didn’t necessarily change chauvinistic attitudes. It just drove them deeper below the surface.

  Abbie studied his chiseled profile. No doubt she was supposed to crumple in the face of his displeasure. He’d be the sort of man to appeal to most women, she supposed, if they liked the lean, lethal, surly type. His short-cropped hair was brown, his eyes behind the glasses an Artic shade of blue. His jaw was hard, as if braced for a punch. Given his personality, she’d be willing to bet he’d caught more than his share of them. He wasn’t particularly tall, maybe five foot ten, but he radiated authority. He was probably used to turning his commanding presence on women and melting them into subservience.

  One corner of her mouth pulled up wryly as she turned back to the file in her lap. There had been a time when it would have produced just that result with her. Fortunately, that time was in the very remote past.

  Ignoring him for the moment, she pored over the police reports, skipping over the complainants’ names to the blocks of texts that detailed the location, offense, MO, victim, and suspect information. “I assume you’re using a state crime lab. What have the tox screens shown?” she asked, without looking up.

  At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he said, “GBI’s Coastal Regional Crime Lab is here in Savannah. The toxicologist hasn’t found anything definitive, and he’s tested for nearly two dozen of the more common substances. Reports on the first three victims showed trace amounts of Ecstasy in their blood. All victims deny being users, and the toxicologist suspects that it was mixed in controlled amounts to make a new compound.”

  She did look up then, her interest piqued. Use of an unfamiliar narcotic agent in the assaults might be their best lead in the case. Even without a sample, it told them something about the unknown subject. “Have you established any commonalities so far besides the drug?”

  “Their hands are always bound with electrical cord, same position. Never their legs. At least not yet. He stalks them first, learns their routine. For most he gets into the house somehow, different entry techniques, so he’s adaptable. But one victim he grabbed off the street and drove thirty miles to her grandparents’ empty beach house for the attack.”

  “Same torture methods?”

  He shook his head. “The first victim he covered with a plastic bag and repeatedly suffocated and revived. The next he carved up pretty bad. Looked like he was trying to cut her face off. Another he worked over with pliers and a hammer.”

  “What about trace evidence?”

  “Nothing yet.” And all the tension she’d sensed from Robel since she’d met him was pent up in the words. “He’s smart and he’s lucky. A bad combination for us. After the second rape I entered the case into the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program system, mentioning the drug as a common element. Only got a few hits. After the third one I resubmitted, thinking the drug might be a new addition for this perp. I don’t have those results back yet, but I’m guessing we’re going to get a lot more hits focusing only on the electrical cord as a common element.”

  “It’s unusual to switch routines like that,” Abbie mused. “Some rapists might experiment at first, perfect their technique, but if you’ve got no trace evidence, it doesn’t sound like this guy is a novice.”

  “He’s not.” Robel turned down a residential street. “He’s been doing this a long time. Maybe he’s escalating now. Maybe it takes more and more for him to get his jollies.”

  It was possible. For serial offenders, increasing the challenge also intensified their excitement. The last three victims of the Romeo rapist had been assaulted in their homes when there had been another family member in the house.

  With that in mind, she asked, “Are there any uncleared homicides in the vicinity that share similarities to the rapes?”

  He looked at her, but she couldn’t guess what he was thinking with the glasses shielding his eyes. “Why?”

  “He had to start somewhere.” Abbie looked out the window at the row of small neat houses dotting the street. “A guy like this doesn’t get to be an expert all at once.” She turned back to Robel, found him still surveying her. “Maybe he went too far once and accidentally killed his victim. Or something could have gone wrong and he had to kill one who could identify him.”

  “Good thought.” The words might have sounded like a compliment if they hadn’t been uttered so grudgingly. “We checked that. Also looked at burglaries. Nothing panned out.” But her remark seemed to have splintered the ice between them.

  “I’m not surprised the burglary angle didn’t turn up anything. This isn’t an opportunity rapist. Sounds like he goes in very prepared, very organized. His intent is the rape itself, at least the ritual he’s made of the act.”

  Ryne returned his attention to the street. “I’m still trying to figure out why he doesn’t kill them. A guy with that much anger toward women, why keep them alive and chance leaving witnesses?” He was slowing, checking the house numbers.

  She needed to familiarize herself with the file before she was close to doing a profile on the type of offender they were hunting. But she knew that wasn’t what Robel was asking for. “Depends on his motivation. Apparently he doesn’t need the victim’s death to fulfill whatever twisted perversion he’s got driving him.”

  “Maybe it’s the difference in the punishment. Serial rapists don’t face the death penalty, even in Georgia.”

  But Abbie shook her head. “He doesn’t ever plan to get caught, so consequences don’t mean much to him. He may be aware of them on some level, but not to the extent that they would deter him.”

  “I worked narcotics, undercover. Did a stint in burglary, a longer one in homicide.” He pulled to a stop before a pale blue bungalow with an attached carport. Only one vehicle was in the drive. “I can understand the motivations of those crimes. Greed, jealousy, anger.” Switching off the car, he removed the sunglasses and slid them back into their spot on the visor. “But I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around rapists. I know what it takes to catch them. I just don’t pretend to understand why they do it.”

  Abbie felt herself thawing toward him a little. “Well, if we figure out what’s motivating this guy,
we’ll be well on our way toward nailing him.”

  “I guess that’s your job.” Robel opened his door and stepped out into the street, reaching back inside the vehicle to retrieve his jacket. “You get in his head and point us in the right direction. That’s what Dixon had in mind, isn’t it?” He slammed the door, shrugging into his suit coat as he rounded the hood of the car.

  Abbie opened her door, was immediately blasted by the midday heat. The rancor in his words had been barely discernible, but it was there. So she didn’t bother telling him that getting inside the rapist’s head was exactly what she planned on.

  It was, in fact, all too familiar territory. She’d spent more years than she’d like to recall doing precisely that.

  Chapter 2

  The air conditioner in Nancy Billings’s modest ranch-style home kept the place at a comfortable seventy, which didn’t account for Barbara Billings’s appearance. Huddled on the corner of a multiflowered couch in the living room, she was dressed in sweats and wrapped in a quilt. Her face was still swollen and bruised, her lip split. And she was even less enthusiastic about their arrival than her mother had been.

  “I’ve already spoken to the police.” Her tone was flat and her gaze was directed somewhere above Ryne’s left shoulder. “Twice. Don’t you people talk? I told them everything I know. Instead of making me go over and over it, why don’t you get out there and find him?”

  The plaintive note in her last few words detracted from her complaint. Ryne didn’t blame her for her reaction. Most victims relived the rape during the recounting, and he didn’t relish putting her in that position. But neither the officers on the Marine Patrol nor the detectives called to the hospital would have been able to ask the questions pertinent to this case.