“If I taste bacon…”
Tony laughed.
“I see I was ratted out. That’s so wrong,” he stated.
“Yeah, bugs on a salad isn’t a bad idea at all,” Elizabeth replied with sarcasm.
She gave Chris what he wanted.
“Yo! Doc, eat and talk. We have shit to handle. What did you find with our second and first victims? How about you give me TOD to kick this fun fest off? I need it so I can lock down some potential suspects.”
He flipped through his file as he ate.
“Eleven at night, give or take thirty minutes,” he said, before taking another bite of his salad.
Yeah, Marc Blanchard was in the clear.
“Now the rest,” she stated.
“Victim one has been washed down with antiseptic post-autopsy, and there’s nothing on her. Christina went over her with a fine-tooth comb, and she didn’t find anything—including DNA from some swimmers.”
“Well, that’s not good. That was how I was going to compare the assault between the two women.”
He was aware.
Yeah, that boat had sailed when they processed her body. Chris shoved salad and chicken into his mouth and kept going.
“Our second and first victim both have the same COD, and ironically, the same TOD. The city ME called it around eleven, and we have confirmation with that video for Mary Waver, as I’ve just said.”
“So why is our killer picking that time of night?” she asked, giving Chris a break to eat. She wanted that answer from her team of investigators.
Alex spoke up, “It’s likely to get out of work. We should look at anyone who works until that time.”
She disagreed.
“No, that’s not going to be it. This person is being trained, and he is going to want to have time to set up, watch, and get ready to do the deed. They will get out of work earlier—if they have a job at all.”
She had a point.
“This crazy likes to stalk his victim—you can tell.”
Callen continued to make notes on his phone.
“Anything else that you can tell me?” she asked Chris.
“Well, when I cut Mary open, I took out her lungs and did the slices.”
“And?”
“She had cancer. It was pretty progressive. I’m going to say she was around second-hand smoke or she smoked herself.”
Yeah, that didn’t help them, but maybe dying helped her. Cancer was a bitch.
“Nothing else?”
“She had nothing under her nails,” Christina said. “Are you really getting us pizza? Can it have pineapple on it?”
She stared at her.
“Uh, if you want it to.”
Normally, she’d bite off the head of anyone who interrupted her case mojo, but this was Christina, and they were damn lucky to get her back.
Plus, she was pregnant.
That was all kinds of wrong.
“And eggs? And anchovies, and…”
The rest of the techs protested.
“If you all don’t focus, the only food you’re going to get is hospital food. As in I’m PUTTING you in one in freaking traction.”
They all went back to work.
Christina laughed, knowing she wouldn’t do that to a pregnant woman, let alone a close friend.
“Don’t listen to her, Chrissy,” Callen stated. “When she was having our last son, she wanted spinach, eggs, and spam on her pizza.”
“Well, that sounds tasty.”
Chris laughed from his salad.
“Ahhh, this healthy eating sucks. Now I want pizza too. I may have to leave the room.”
She knew he couldn’t go cold turkey, so she’d ease off a bit like he’d asked.
“If you meet me in the gym to work out, you can have it,” she stated. “A slice won’t hurt.”
He smiled at her.
She was getting it.
“Pizza and an ass-kicking or a big bug covered salad. Mmmmm…greens.”
She laughed.
“I’ll hook you up, but you have to work for it. You know that,” she said to the techs—not Chris. He could have whatever he wanted.
Chrissy took over.
“She didn’t make contact with the assailant. He moved that fast. Once that knife went in, it was done. Period.”
And he was wearing gloves—which added to the team’s frustration. They could see that from the video.
They didn’t even have ethnicity.
“Let’s talk rape. We know that he killed her and then got off on it and in her. Tell me we have swimmers.”
“We do,” she said. “Again, it’s running, but I can’t compare it to the first woman. She was washed down. When the city ME swabbed her, there must not have been much.”
“Or she was standing at the time and alive,” Elizabeth stated.
Tony looked over.
“What does that have to do with it?” he asked.
“Gravity,” Chris said. “Liquids will run downhill. She likely didn’t have a lot left IN her—if you know what I mean. It was likely on her thighs and the rinsing…”
Now he got it.
“Run it and see what we get. I wish I had that sample that went off to the state lab. We won’t have it for a long time,” Elizabeth stated.
This one was a tough one.
“Does anyone have anything that’s going to make me not want to hurt you all?” she asked.
Max raised his hand.
“What?”
“I did what you asked, and I have the logs and phone calls from the supermax.”
“And?”
“It seems that Carl was a popular man. He had a woman who really wanted in his orange jumper. I don’t get it but to each their own.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Why do women want to hook up with killers and the worst of the human element?”
“Bad boys,” Callen stated. “They love us. They can’t control themselves around us.”
“Really?”
“Jackson James,” he said, and all the female techs, including Christina sighed.
Well, someone had been reading someone’s books. It looked like Callen had a point. She loved when he went all ‘Jackson James’ on her.
“What did you find out, Detective?”
He sent it to the screen.
“We have this woman, a Stephanie Montany. She called him weekly, sent him money for his snacks and smokes, and wrote him letters every week.”
“Do you have any of those letters?” she asked.
“Oh, well, yes, but it’s…racy.”
She laughed.
“Last night I slept in a bed with three men. I can handle racy. That’s how I roll on a daily basis, and I’m marrying Jackson James next month.”
There were more sighs from the ladies, and everyone else looked over at Chris who smiled as he ate his salad. It was clear she was laying the groundwork for him being part of their unit.
That made him really happy. He loved that they were keeping him safe. When he always thought he’d never marry again, he’d never seen this one coming.
Not.
At.
All.
Then Callen was their focus.
“What?” he asked. “She’s not lying.”
Elizabeth wanted to make sure that if a rumor got out, it was that she was some sex-crazed maniac, and not that Chris had HIV. She’d take this one for her team.
It was a pretty realistic rumor.
After all, she was pretty horny all the time. At that moment, she was picturing Callen in prison attire and her in a police uniform.
Sue her.
Her husbands were hot.
Ethan and Callen melted her brain.
“Continue,” she stated, trying to cool down from her sexy husband fantasies. “What else, Max?”
Max was confused as hell, and that amused her to the point she wanted to torment him more, but Callen pointed at her.
“Don’t.”
She closed her mouth.<
br />
“Here’s the letter they scanned. You don’t want me to read it, do you?” he asked, hoping that was not going to be the case.
“Oh, I think you should.”
“I don’t think I should.”
Elizabeth grinned wickedly. “Welcome to my domain. Get reading, son.”
He swallowed and sucked it up.
‘My Dearest Carl,
I dream about you every night, and in those dreams, you are taking me roughly as I scream your name. I cum so many times that I’m exhausted afterward, and I can’t even move. I can’t wait until you’re out, and we can live out all of our fantasies. I promise to make you so happy. I’ll have a beer ready for you, and I’ll blow you until your eyes cross. Come find me when you’re out, and my pussy will be waiting--shaved. I want you to use me all you want.
Forever,
Steph.’
Max was bright red.
It appeared they had someone easily embarrassed in their midst.
Oh, that was good for her and bad for him.
“And that, right there, is why some women get killed. You don’t date mob killers who were hired to hide bodies,” she stated.
While nothing in it was that racy to her, since she pretty much spent an hour a day on her knees blowing one of her sexy men, it was the fact that hers carried badges and not notches from their kills.
There was a big difference.
HUGE.
“She’s crazy,” Christina stated. “We’ll be getting her next,” she stated.
Yeah, they wouldn’t be surprised.
When you bedded down with killers, you tended to end up one of their victims.
“Okay, so we found a convict chaser.”
“But why?” Chris asked. “That’s just asking for some issue.”
She couldn't answer that, but she knew who could.
“Let’s ask the expert,” she stated, pointing at the screen.
“MATE, call Blackhawk One. Connect,” she said, calling her husband.
The screen went into video mode, and Ethan’s face appeared on it.
God!
She loved how the whole FBI was upgrading in tech. This made it so much easier.
“Hey, baby, I was just handling lunch. What do you need?” Ethan asked, noticing they were in the morgue and not alone. This had to be about work.
“We have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Why do women want to marry and have conjugal visits with prisoners?”
“Is Callen going to jail? Or are you asking for a friend?” he asked, making air quotes around the word friend.
She laughed.
“One of the two brothers has been to jail a few times, and it wasn’t this one,” Callen stated.
Ethan gave her the Blackhawk grin, and Elizabeth’s heart thumped.
Yeah, bad boys…so hot.
“Seriously, why do women do it?”
“Have you found someone in the case who falls into that category?”
She nodded at Max.
“Tell him.”
He did, and she made him reread the letter all over again, and that made it a million times worse.
Hey!
She had to see if he could swim with the big fish in the FBI pond, or if he was small fish material.
He got through it.
When he finished, Ethan took a minute to think about it. It was pretty common, but the why?
Yeah, that would be important.
“There’s a commonality with all the women who chase after serial killers. It’s all about abuse. More times than not, these women are abused from a young age by family, friends, husbands, lovers, and they tend to be more than physical abuse, but sexual and mental too.”
“Was she married before?” Elizabeth asked Max.
“Yes, divorced and she has a son. He’s twenty and still lives at home with her.”
BINGO.
And they had Carl training a killer.
What a coincidence.
Someone jumped to the head of the list, and fast. It looked like they were going to take a look at this woman’s son.
“The other part of having a relationship with a killer is they can’t hurt them. They’re locked up, and they are deemed safe. That’s the primary thing.”
“Only, Carl, he didn’t have a life sentence.”
“No, he didn’t. He only had twelve years. He was bound to get out.”
“She may have liked the rush. You know, playing chicken with that oncoming train.”
“What’s the son’s name?” Elizabeth asked Max.
“Brian and I did the research on him too. You’re going to want to see it.”
Oh, she was pretty sure she would.
This was the best lead yet, and they all knew it.
“Send it to video. It’ll play over me,” Ethan stated. “I’ll be able to give you more once I see it. I’ll update the preliminary profile.”
Max did what he asked.
The police reports scrolled over the image of Ethan and they both read it.
“He’s killed animals, he’s been arrested from the age of twelve on, and he’s got mental issues,” she stated.
“He’s high on the probability list,” Ethan admitted. “The fact that he’s tortured animals—that’s the making of a serial killer. The fact that he’s been in trouble all those years shows he’s going to have an issue with authority.”
“Does that change your profile?” she asked, thinking back to what he told them earlier.
Easily manipulated and someone with less than average intelligence. Yeah, the man-child, Brian Montany, fit it.
He laughed at her question.
“Baby, that is my profile to a T.”
“He’s into drugs too,” Max said, as a warrant popped up on the screen. He has an outstanding one that he was supposed to have shown for court.”
That gave them a way to find him and bring him in.
“Do we have an address for him?” she asked, crossing her fingers.
“We have a few,” Alex stated. “He moves around a lot, but we should be able to find him—an upstanding citizen like himself.”
She thought about it.
“I need to locate him because we are only going to get one shot at him.”
They knew she was right.
“Alex, can you and Max head out, take those addresses, and see if you can find him?”
“You want us to bring him in if we locate him?” he asked, grinning like a fool.
“No, I want you to lock him down, and if you find him, I will have my spiffy husband call the US Marshals Fugitive Warrant Task Force to help us get him.”
“Do you think that’s his helper?” Tony asked, wanting all of this to end for his wife’s sake. She was standing there and listening. Jaxon looked emotional again.
“The odds are, yes, but…we don’t know yet. There are a lot of crazies out there.”
In the back of Elizabeth’s mind, she was thinking about what Callen had told her about his gut instinct.
She made sure she kept it all in perspective as she mulled over her backup plan.
It was beyond them.
It was beyond her security.
She was banking on something that the killer wouldn’t see coming. She loved a wildcard variable.
And she wasn’t fooled.
So, for now, they’d play it safe until she could cross everyone off her list and have irrevocable evidence on this one. Over a decade ago, they went into a house for some whacked-out associate of O’Banion’s, and it didn’t end well.
At all.
This was going to be a dangerous operation.
“Get me his location, and we can get him then. I need to make sure we don’t lose him.”
Alex motioned to the younger man. “Come on. We’ll grab lunch on the way.”
“What about me?” Noah stated.
“I need you to keep researching. We need to check every single person we’ve come across for some
one like this Brian. We need to make sure we cross every T and dot every I. I don’t want to miss a single thing.”
“Yeah, we had this issue before,” Noah stated.
She was aware.
It was the day she went into that building and the mob had jacked with the S.W.A.T going in.
This felt a little too similar.
And she didn’t like it.
At all.
“When we get Brian, we’ll take his dear old mother in, too, and we’ll make sure to ask her where her prison lover is. If she won’t play nice, I’ll get it out of her.”
That worked for all of them.
No one doubted her interrogation skills. They could be wicked at best.
“Are you heading my way?” Ethan asked, reminding them that he was still there.
“Yeah, you promised me food.”
“Salads?” he asked.
Chris laughed at that.
“Misery loves company, so, yeah, get me something green and healthy.”
Then she saw Christina staring at her like a lost puppy who hadn’t eaten in days.
“Ethan, order up a Lyzee special for Christina, and some regular pizzas for the rest of the team.”
“Spinach, spam, and an egg?” he asked, wishing that would have died when she gave birth.
It was atrocious.
“Yeah, she wants it.”
“I can do that,” he offered.
Christina bounced in her seat and rubbed her baby belly as she talked to it.
That amused her.
“Team, keep working, and let me know if anything comes up.”
She and Callen headed out.
They had a date.
With a sexy husband.
Theirs.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Office of The
Director of The
FBI
Gabe was NOT happy.
The president had gotten wind of the whole O’Banion debacle, and he didn’t want this mess turning up on his watch.
He’d pretty much laid down the law, stating that it was to be handled ASAP.
He wanted O’Banion taken care of, and Gabe was pretty sure he didn’t mean asked out for ice cream after this whole thing was over.
That was bad news.
For who?
Elizabeth.
She was going to have to handle the whole situation, and that didn’t make him happy. Gabe really didn’t enjoy dumping any of this mess in her lap.
Dead are Forgotten Page 40
