Waking Nightmare

by Kylie Brant

  “Anything from the lab on the syringe contents yet?” Captain Brown asked.

  Ryne shook his head. “But I hope to have at least a preliminary report soon.” His gaze shifted to Cantrell. “Why don’t you update everyone on the shoes found in Juarez’s apartment.”

  “We reached a dead end.” The detective delivered the news with his usual impassive manner. Abbie couldn’t recall a time when she’d heard expression of any sort creep into his voice. Or for that matter, seen a change in his demeanor. That kind of control must come in handy when working with McElroy.

  “The sneakers are mass produced and available in discount stores across the country. Local outlets have had them available for over a year. The only peculiar thing we found is that they’re a size larger than Juarez’s foot measures. Bigger than the shoes he was wearing when we picked him up.”

  That news brought silence to the room for a moment. Then Holmes said, “He might have thought that would throw us off if he left prints with a larger shoe than he normally wears.”

  Abbie remained quiet. It was entirely possible that the detective was right. It would take an informed offender to be aware that there were ways to measure depth and width of a footprint left at a crime scene that could determine such a thing.

  It was equally possible that the shoes didn’t belong to Juarez at all.

  Ryne was speaking. “We’ve got a solid handle on Juarez’s hangouts, so I’m putting on-duty officers in street clothes in each of his favorite bars between eight and two a.m. They’ll take some pictures of the patrons with camera phones and we’ll see whom he’s been associating with. Someone may pop for us.”

  “Who do we have to know to pull that duty?” McElroy called out from his slouched position. “Because I’m willing to sacrifice my liver and my sleep. You can even skip the overtime pay.”

  The others chuckled, and even Ryne smiled. “Sorry, Nick. The last thing I want to do is short you on beauty sleep. The officers need to fit in, so they’ll be drinking nonalcoholic beers. But I promise to give you first shot at the photos they take.”

  He consulted his notebook before continuing. “I’ve got the LUDs back on Hornby’s phone. All the calls for the last two months have been accounted for. Preliminary results are in from the ME and they support suicide as cause of death. Her prints are the only ones on the drinking glass found next to the body.”

  “You didn’t think this guy would come back and finish the job, did you?” Isaac Holmes directed the question to Abbie.

  She shook her head. “If the UNSUB had wanted her dead—if he’d wanted any of them dead—he’d have killed them during the course of the assaults.”

  “Looks to me like he made a pretty good attempt each time,” Cantrell drawled, and there was a murmur of agreement in the room.

  “If they hadn’t been discovered, any one of the victims could have died from her wounds. But each of them was discovered. And that’s too coincidental not to have been planned. Once, maybe, okay. But every time?” She shook her head. “Whether you agree with the profile theory or not, you have to look at the odds. The more victims he doesn’t kill, the more it looks deliberate. They live because he wants them to. Above everything else, these attacks are all about his power. What’s more absolute than the power over life or death? It’s the ultimate in control. For whatever reason, he’s chosen to let them live. For now.”

  Ryne looked up sharply, and Abbie saw that the other detectives were just as focused on her words, so she chose them carefully. “I still think he leaves them alive to carry out some twisted long-term suffering he’s arranged for them. But he isn’t always going to be lucky. Things are going to go wrong at some point. He’s going to be surprised by a victim who takes longer to subdue, one who maybe gets a glimpse of him while she struggles. He’s too careful to leave a victim who can identify him.” She paused for a moment, then added, “Or he’ll lose control at some point. Either situation means a woman dies.”

  The mood in the room turned even grimmer. Ryne didn’t mention the possible Karen Larsen connection and Abbie knew that he wouldn’t. Given the way Dixon had come up with that information, they’d have to tread very lightly until they got more to go on from the woman herself.

  Instead Ryne focused on the exhaustive background that had been compiled on Juarez’s family and acquaintances. Of special note was the fact that Juarez had leveled complaints with the warden of the prison where he’d served time. According to his claim, his former cell mate had raped him continuously during his first few months behind bars, until he’d been moved.

  McElroy shot her a sideways glance. “What about it, Tink? A guy who’s been turned into some hillbilly’s butt buddy might have a little pent-up anger, don’t ya think?”

  She didn’t respond, but there was no ignoring the truth in his words. Abbie was aware of the sort of rage that built up from years of that sort of abuse.

  And rage could motivate people to do horrific things.

  She went back to her desk, keeping an eye out for Ryne. He hadn’t assigned her a task during the meeting, but they’d discussed the case again this morning over coffee. And even earlier, she recalled with a flush of heat, as they dried each other off from the shower, where they’d stayed, limp and sated, until the hot water had finally run out.

  It was a curious sort of intimacy to find herself just as fascinated with a man’s mind as she was with the chemistry that sparked to life so easily between them. Well, almost as fascinated.

  Although she was fastidious, she didn’t lack experience. But she’d selected other men in her life because she could so easily keep them at a distance. That distance meant that they’d also lacked the combustible sexual connection she’d found with Ryne. And since she’d deliberately kept the parts of her life compartmentalized, she’d never had a lover she could discuss her job with.

  But those discussions were a natural part of her relationship with Ryne, and she found it a novel pleasure. Even if they hadn’t been working on the same case, it would take someone affiliated with law enforcement to understand the frustration and demands of their investigations. That understanding gilded an explosive desire that seemed only to burn hotter the more time they spent together. She was hardly in a position to judge, but it seemed to her that a relationship like that was about as close to perfect as she could ask for, even if it was only temporary.

  She gave herself a mental shake. Especially because it was temporary. Just the thought of embarking on a long-term relationship with a man could still turn her veins to ice, and she knew Ryne well enough to realize he felt the same. In that way, if in no other, he was safe. He’d expect no more from her than she was willing to give.

  But that thought was immediately elbowed aside by the memory of two instances when he’d demanded more, much more, than she’d wanted to share. When he’d insisted on answers she hadn’t intended to provide, with a dogged persistence that had been impossible to evade. He’d already elicited much more personal information about her than she’d shared with anyone in over a decade, with the exception of Raiker.

  And it hadn’t escaped her that he hadn’t reciprocated in kind.

  With a pang, she watched him head toward the desks, deep in conversation with Dennis Brown. Ryne Robel had his own secrets, and he was as guarded with them as she was with her own. She wouldn’t pry, because she knew what it was to value privacy.

  But that didn’t mean she didn’t want him to trust her enough to tell her what haunted him. She smiled mirthlessly. And that must mean she topped the charts for inconsistency. For the first time in her life she wanted the very intimacy that was sure to send her running if it were offered.

  Abbie waited until the captain headed toward his office to approach her desk. Seeing Ryne’s expression, she raised her brows. “You don’t look happy.”

  He scowled. “Dixon contacted the captain before the briefing. Apparently he had a meeting with the chief and got a real ass chewing, because he saw fit to pass it on. I�
�ve got a meeting with the commander this afternoon for probably more of the same.”

  Abbie spun her chair around to face him more fully. “It sure would be nice to get a preliminary report from Han on the contents of the syringe. That should divert Dixon’s attention.”

  Nodding, he replied, “Exactly what I was thinking. I’m heading over to the lab right now to talk to him. I hope to God he’s got something for me.” He went to the bottom drawer of his desk and withdrew a thick binder, handing it to her. “This is the newest information I’ve gotten from ViCAP.”

  She took the binder, eyeing it dubiously. “I thought you said you hadn’t found any close matches.” The database compared signature aspects and similar patterns in MO for violent crimes. The most notable aspect of their UNSUB’s signature was the use of the drug, which had failed to match any cases in the database. Resubmitting the information minus the drug, using only the electrical cord as a commonality, they’d gotten substantially more hits, but these would be long shots.

  “Don’t look like that. You’re the one who said something about this guy evolving.” He propped his hips on the corner of his desk, folded his arms. “If the drug is a new part of his MO, maybe we should be looking harder at the cases involving bondage with electrical cord. It’s possible that perp evolved from less violent rapes to the ones we’re seeing now, right?”

  “It’s probable.” Abbie leaned back a bit in her chair to look at him. “It’s also possible that he evolved from sexual homicides to the ones we’re seeing in Savannah.”

  Ryne looked skeptical. “A serial rapist who’s deescalating? Is that likely?”

  “He wouldn’t be deescalating,” she corrected him. She’d tossed the idea out without thinking it through, but the more she considered it, the more credible it seemed. “Again, it would depend on his motivation. If he’s allowing the victims to live because he’s arranged long-term psychological torment for them, then it’s likely he’s killed victims in the past, and no longer finds it satisfying. Remember, this guy thinks he’s suffered. It would follow that he’s still dealing with issues caused by abuse. So why should his victims get the easy way out? The toughest part of life isn’t death, after all. It’s living, and dealing with our pasts.”

  He went still, and she stopped, recalling in a flash what she’d been thinking about before he joined her. His ghosts were just as persistent as hers. She wondered how well he dealt with them. He’d mentioned once that he didn’t drink anymore. Had drinking caused the ghosts or been used to keep them at bay?

  But a moment later he’d recovered, shooting her a wry grin. “Like I said. You’re a scary lady.”

  To defuse the awkwardness, she strove for humor. “You should know. You saw me in the ring.”

  “That I did. Although honesty forces me to admit I found the sight more arousing than frightening.”

  That surprised a laugh from her. “It would appear then that you’re easily aroused.”

  “By you?” He pretended to give it some thought, then gave her a slow wink. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  She could feel heat crawling up the back of her neck and had the urge to look around to be sure no one else was within hearing distance. But her gaze was trapped by his, and the wicked glint in his eyes made it impossible to look away. His eyes weren’t arctic now. They were deep blue pools of wicked promise. And Abbie knew from delicious past experience that if they had a modicum of privacy, she’d be in his arms, naked, under him, in a heartbeat.

  Because the man moved fast. She was growing increasingly familiar with his moves, and wholeheartedly approved of them.

  Clearing her throat, she tore her gaze away to stare blindly at the binder in her hand. “I’ll take a look at it today,” she promised, attempting to gather her scattered thoughts. “Oh, and I had an idea about the shoes.”

  He cocked his head, seemed amused. “Okay, you had me right up to that last statement. What shoes?”

  “The ones found in Juarez’s apartment. Have you considered what it means if they were planted there?”

  A flicker of annoyance passed over his expression. “After what we found out about his life in prison, I’m more interested in him as a suspect, not less.”

  She lifted a hand to stave off the argument. “I’m not discounting that. Just trying to look at all sides. Because if they really don’t belong to him, we’ve got an UNSUB who did more than scope out a random available vehicle to transport a victim. He’s deliberately drawing attention to Juarez as a suspect, which means he’s engaging the police, at least on some level.”

  Ryne stretched out his legs, appeared to give it some thought. “If Juarez doesn’t turn out to be the twist we’re looking for . . . sure. I’ve run into that before, where the perp tried to point us toward someone else to make us expend time and resources looking in the wrong direction. Doesn’t usually go that far, because we eventually see through it.”

  “Eventually,” she reminded him. “After wasting valuable man-hours.”

  He conceded her point with a nod of his head and pushed away from the desk. “I’ve got to get moving if I want to corner Han before my meeting with Dixon. The colored highlighters are in my desk drawer. Help yourself.”

  She started to thank him, then snapped her mouth shut and slanted him a glance. “What makes you think I’ll need them?”

  A half smile played across his lips as he surveyed her. “What’s it going to be? Pink for cases with electrical cord and blue for sexual homicides that share some commonalities with our case? Yellow for assaults where the assailant hid in the home?”

  Because she had every intention of color-coding the documentation, the accuracy of his guess was more than a little annoying. “Think you know me pretty well, do you?”

  The look of male satisfaction on his face was impossible to miss. “I think I’m beginning to.”

  “Then you won’t be surprised to learn I have every intention of working the Larsen and Cordray angle today, too. If I spent all day on the binder, my eyeballs will be bleeding in hours.”

  “Suit yourself.” His smile was suspiciously close to a smirk. “And keep me posted.”

  “No problem. Enjoy your meeting with Dixon.”

  Her gibe succeeded in wiping the humor from his expression and he winced. “You’ve got a cruel streak, Abbie. I don’t know when I started finding that so damn attractive in a woman.”

  Ryne leaned against the wall of the crime lab’s conference room and mentally rehearsed his spiel for Han. The chemist wouldn’t be pleased to see him, but Ryne thought he’d shown great forbearance in not contacting the man earlier. And let’s face it, he needed to arm himself with good news before the meeting with Dixon.

  It would have been far easier if he had only Dennis Brown to answer to. The captain had been in the trenches, had worked difficult investigations before and realized the excruciating process of fitting hundreds of seemingly disconnected pieces of information together to make a case. Back in Boston, Dixon had always been more political tool than cop. Nothing in the last year had convinced Ryne he’d changed.

  Mark Han entered the room, a familiar expression of impatience on his face, and Ryne straightened, reached for diplomacy. But the need didn’t arise. The man saw him and grunted. “Good. I was hoping it was you. I was about to call.”

  For Han, those words were tantamount to a pleasantry, and Ryne was momentarily taken aback. Then comprehension filtered through him and excitement flared. “You’ve identified the drug?”

  “It’s a beauty.” Han crossed quickly to a conference table and set down the notebook he carried. “From a purely scientific standpoint, of course. Someone spent a lot of time designing this compound.”

  He flipped the book open and pointed to a page. Ryne glanced down at the scribbled formulas and notes. They may as well have been written in Greek. “Why don’t you tell me what you discovered.”

  “I’m not done with all the tests. I have to be careful with such a limited amou
nt of the sample. I don’t suppose you’ve found any more?”

  Ryne hated to dash the hope in the other man’s expression, but he shook his head.

  Han gave a philosophical shrug. “In any case, I think I’ve identified the two main components of the compound. One is MDMA, methylenedioxymethamphetamine.”

  “Ecstasy,” Ryne murmured. The tox screens had shown traces of it in each victim.

  “Right. Often people will report enhanced tactile sensations with use. But you’ll never guess the second element I identified.”

  “You’re not going to make me, are you?”

  Han reached up to push his glasses more firmly on his nose and flipped a page in his notebook. “Tetrodotoxin, or TTX.” He paused expectantly for a moment, awaiting a response, but when Ryne merely raised his brows, the chemist blew out a breath. “It’s a highly poisonous neurotoxin that is fatal well over half the time it’s ingested. Ten thousand times deadlier than cyanide. A single milligram is enough to kill.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ryne jammed a hand through his hair, as a new thought hit him. “He was trying to poison them?”

  Han shook his head impatiently. “This drug is a derivative of TTX, which tells me the guy was going for some of its effects, but not death. If he wanted to kill them, he’d have mixed in a larger amount. No, from what you told me about the victims’ reactions, he probably wanted to immobilize them. With large dosages, the first symptom would have been numbness or tingling in the lips, followed by complete paralysis, cardiac and respiratory distress, and then death.”

  Ryne pulled out a chair and reached for the chemist’s notebook, flipping through pages, although none of the chemical formulas or writing made much more sense than the pages he’d already seen. “All the victims reported the tingling in their lips,” he affirmed. “But although they were weak after he injected them, most of them still spoke of struggling, so they weren’t completely paralyzed. They were all injected twice during the course of the assault.”