“You go find a book,” he mutters, but stands up and leaves the room.
Well, now there’s still one hour and fifty-nine minutes left to listen to. All of the policemen seem to be checking their phones except Lauren who is leaning in closely, trying to pick up every small sound on the TV.
There’s also a man with golden hair who seems to be observing Lauren.
I lean closer toward Lauren.
“Who’s the new guy?” I whisper.
“Who?” she asks, her eyes still staring at the screen like it will make the sound come through clearer.
“The guy with the blond hair. Mid to late thirties. He’s wearing a plain blue shirt and jeans. Why isn’t he dressed up if he’s an officer?”
She glances over her shoulder. She must catch the guy’s eye because he waves and she waves back. She switches her gaze back to the TV.
“He doesn’t have to dress up because he’s the boss,” she whispers. “That’s our new Captain. His name is Sean Hotchens.”
I look back over at him. He’s still watching Lauren.
“Don’t you think that’s weird that we got somebody new so quickly?” I ask. “I don’t like him.”
“We’re in a middle of a case involving a serial killer and our police station was just blown up,” she says. “So, no, I don’t think it’s weird. Besides, former Captain Mattinson probably told the city that he was leaving a couple of weeks before he actually left. They had time to find a replacement and they likely thought that we needed somebody to lead and organize us, so they didn’t want us to be without a Captain for too long.”
“He’s still suspicious,” I say. “Why doesn’t he want to make a good impression by wearing more professional clothes?”
“He made a good impression on me,” she says.
Yeah, I bet he did. “You already talked to him?”
“Yeah,” she says. “He’s nice. He seems smart, too.”
In my periphery, I can see Captain Hotchens walk up to us. He stops right in between us.
“I bet you two never thought something like this would be part of your jobs,” he says. “I know when I was in your shoes, I was hoping there would be a lot more chasing after bad guys than checking alibis and talking to possible witnesses that refuse to give any statement.”
“Yes, well, I’ve been shot with a nail gun twice and had my partner have a gun held up to her head by a sociopath, so I don’t mind this part of the job,” I say.
“I understand,” he says, his calm attitude both annoying and suspicious. “I imagine both of you will want to take your vacation days as soon as this is over.”
“No. I like to keep busy,” I say. “It keeps my mind—”
“Shut up,” Lauren snaps.
“What?” I ask. “We were just talking about—”
“Shut up,” she repeats. She leans in closer to the TV. “I think I hear somebody crying.”
“It’s probably the sound of Hamlin’s soul,” I mutter. “Since he no longer has a desk—”
“Shh,” she says. That’s when I hear the faint sobbing. It must be the killer’s crucified victim. They were still alive nearly an hour before we got there.
“You’ve been resistant,” a male voice rumbles, though the static makes him barely audible. “Are you ready to beg forgiveness from God? To throw your life down for Him for saving you with His Son’s blood?”
The static makes it hard to hear an answer, but there must be one because the man starts to talk again.
“I don’t know if I can believe you,” he says. “I’ve seen your doubt. I’ve heard your hesitation. You don’t believe what you’re saying.”
“I do, I do,” the victim pleads. “I swear.”
“I hope you’re right because if you think this is painful, wait until you find yourself in Hell if you’re lying to God,” The Son says. “We can only hope that your payment in pain is enough to make things right with God. It is good that God is merciful because you took Jesus’ sacrifice for granted. He gave you freewill and you spit in His face with it.”
“W-what are you going to do?” the victim asks.
“I’m going to gag you and leave,” he says.
“No, please, please, just kill me,” the victim pleads. “I can’t—the pain is too much. I can’t do this anymore.”
“You need to feel exactly what Jesus felt or you’ll never truly understand His sacrifice,” The Son says. “Goodbye, Mr. Romaine. May God bless you or, at the very least, have mercy on your blood-stained soul.”
The video returns to silence except for the occasional honking or music from a passing car.
“Did either of you pick up on anything?” Hotchens asks. “You two know the case better than anything.”
I shake my head. Lauren shrugs.
“I think it pretty much tells us what we already knew,” she says. “This reinforces our belief that the killer isn’t killing for fun—or at least, he’s justifying his murders by twisting Christianity. At least we know when he was put there. He must have died shortly after for his body to be cold by the he was discovered.”
“All right,” Hotchens says. “Well, Dr. Annette Harris is at the Thiessan Memorial Hospital doing the autopsy, so hopefully we’ll have our results soon and hopefully this guy messed up. I was really crossing my fingers that we would catch this guy before another murder was committed.”
“Well, you know what they say about hoping,” I say. “It’s a lot like doing nothing, but more mentally straining and less fun.”
Hotchens’ forehead furrows. “Nobody says that.”
“I just said it and I’m pretty sure I can get Romano and Hamlin to say it.” I pull my jacket on. “And speaking of Romano, I’m going to go check on him. Do you want to come with me, Lauren?”
“Uh, I’ll go later,” she says. “I’m going to type up a transcript of what’s said in this video. Maybe if it’s written out, we can find more clues.”
I nod. It sounds like an excuse, but she could have died yesterday, so I can’t feel angry about it. I keep thinking about that adage—if you love something, let it go, and if it comes back, you know that the relationship was always meant to be. But I’ve never let go of anything that truly mattered to me. It may make me a good detective, but it makes me shitty at relationships.
As I’m about to leave the room, I turn to see Hotchens leaning over Lauren as he takes the TV remote from her. I never thought I’d miss Mattinson, but I guess it’s true that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
*****
Romano has a nose cannula draped over his face and both of his legs are in casts. He doesn’t appear like he’s comfortable on his hospital bed, but he still has a smile on his face as I sit down beside him.
“I heard that I got the worst of the explosion,” he says. “Can you at least tell me that the news is saying I’m a hero and I’m getting some kind of award? And that the beautiful news anchor from channel 13 has fallen in love with me after talking about my heroics?”
“Uh, well, I’m not sure,” I confess. “I haven’t paid any attention to the news. Everything has been a bit chaotic. There was the bomb and another body has been crucified.”
“Well, shit, Tobias,” he says. “I thought you were like the Hulk. As soon as you got angry, you got shit done.”
I laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m less like the Hulk and more like…a detective that can’t get any part of his life together. But let’s not talk about me. You can’t get that close to death again, Romano. We’ve already lost too many good people.”
“I know, I know,” he says. “I should have dodged that explosion. I tell you what: I’ll promise to try to not die as long as I get to be your best man when you and Lauren tie the knot. I’ve always wanted to throw a bachelor party.”
I grimace. “Yeah, buddy. That’s probably not going to happen because we broke up.”
Romano’s jaw drops and his hand rises a few inches in exasperation. “For God’s sake, I nearly get blown
up by some psychopath and now you’re telling me that you two broke up? Now, I know there’s no way that you dumped her, so what the hell did you do that caused her to ditch you? Do you have any more bombs to drop on me? Literal or figurative?”
I shake my head. “No, no…the bomb, the crucified body, and my break-up pretty much covers it.”
“Well, we can do something about at least one of those,” he says. “Why aren’t you with her, trying to get her back?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. She doesn’t seem interested in spending any time with me. She seems to be avoiding me. Do you have any advice?”
“Oh, no, I’m terrible with women,” he says. “But…from the perspective of a detective…if I wanted to get closer to a potential suspect or witness that happened to be female…I would ask the men in her life. Do you know her father?”
“Her father is deceased,” I say. “Her mother is also gone. She doesn’t really have any friends and the only other family she has is her grandmother and her half-brother.”
“Well, the half-brother should work as an informant,” he says. “Go question him.”
“They’re not that close,” I tell him. “They barely spoke to each other until their grandmother became sick.”
“Still…” Romano says. “He may be able to help. And if that doesn’t work, interrogate the grandmother. Look, Tobias. I’m going to be stuck in a wheelchair forever. I need a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not going to sit at my desk, doing paperwork because I can’t be on the street, and watching you and Lauren not be a couple. There needs to be a little bit of positive energy going on at the station and you two have been that positive energy for the last few months. Plus, from a wheelchair I would still be able to plan a bachelor party and all of the strippers would be extra nice to me.”
“You realize we kind of don’t have a police station anymore, right?” I ask.
He groans. “That’s even more reason to give me something good,” he says. “Do it for me, Tobias. Do you want me to pretend to be dying to motivate you?”
I lean back into my chair. “You’re an asshole.”
“A crippled asshole who is also regarded as a hero.” He closes his eyes, leaning into the pillow. “I’m practically a saint.”
Chapter Four
Lauren
The couch at the library is smaller than a loveseat, so my ankles dangle over the armrest as I try to take a nap. I already typed up a transcript of the video, but I didn’t find any new information that way, so now I’m just tired since I was woken up at three in the morning by Kelly’s screaming. Even if I wanted to take the day off, my apartment building is now considered part of a crime scene, and I’m not in a rush to be surrounded by police officers in my own home. Everyone is probably going to hate me when I get back since they’ll all have been questioned by someone on the force.
“Detective Williams?”
I open one eye. Captain Sean Hotchens is standing in front of me with two tall disposable cups.
“I thought you might want some coffee,” he says as I sit up. “But if you’d prefer to sleep, that’s okay too.”
“No, no, we need as many hands as possible on this case,” I say, yawning.
He hands me the coffee and I take it. The cup sleeve says Big Bean, a coffee shop that makes amazing coffee, but I’ve only been there once since their coffee costs nearly three dollars more than everywhere else.
“Thank you,” I say. “This is really nice.”
“Well, you’re both one of my detectives and someone who could be a target for a serial killer, so I figured you should get something nice.”
“So, you’re being nice because you think a serial killer might try to murder me?” I ask.
“No, I’m being nice because you’re an intelligent, beautiful, driven woman,” he says. “The fact that a serial killer could be trying to murder you is just part of the job.”
“Well, that’s true,” I say. “It’s not the first time someone has tried to kill me.”
He sits down beside me. It should feel like an invasion of my personal space, but it doesn’t come across that way.
“That’s right,” he says. “You had the PVP Killer, who was obsessed with you, and then this last guy, Christopher Lush.”
“Technically, Mary Fitzgerald tried to kill me as well,” I say. “I just managed to, uh, disarm her first.”
“Right, with the nail gun,” he says. “That was pretty impressive.”
“I don’t think that’s quite how my superiors saw it,” I say. “But I think it was swept under the rug with everything else that was happening.”
“That’s politics for you,” he says. “But you had a right to defend yourself. Your partner was hurt and you had another victim on a cross. You needed to save them as quickly as possible and you found a way to by using the murderer’s weapon against her. I call that impressive.”
“Well, thank you,” I say. “I see that you learned about our cases quite thoroughly, Captain Hotchens.”
“Please—I don’t even wear professional clothes. You can call me Sean. I hate all of those official labels. And I didn’t just focus on your recent cases involving this religious killer,” he says. “I studied everything about my new detectives that were working on the case. I want to ask you about something and it’s really, really personal.”
“Go ahead,” I say. “I’m not ashamed of anything.”
“Your name used to be Lauren Miller,” he says. My heard skips a beat. “Which, I understand concerning your incident with that girl that you stabbed—”
“That was self-defense,” I say. “She was trying to stab me, I tried to stop her from doing it, her hand slipped, and without the resistance of her shoving the scissors at me, my body weight pushed the scissors into her. It was purely—”
“I know,” he interrupts. “My question has nothing to do with that. My question is actually about your parents. Was it weird to go back to your mother’s maiden name? Did it make you feel…I don’t know…disconnected from your parents since that was one of your remaining connections to them?”
I stare at him. “Why are you asking this? Why did you dig so far into my life that you know what my mother’s maiden name was?”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to sound like a stalker. My father was actually the judge on your parent’s case. Even though it was so long ago, I remember it well because he became really depressed after the case.”
“I remember,” I say. “Judge Hotchens. I can’t believe…I should have recognized your name right away. There was a long time in my life where I couldn’t forget your father’s face. He just looked so upset through the whole case.”
“Yeah, he let everything get to him,” he says. “It’s a good and bad attribute for a judge. But as soon as I began looking into you, saw your past and about your parents, I realized you were the daughter of that couple. It just seemed crazy that we would meet after all this time. I mean, we’re not even in the same state anymore. It must be fate.”
I laugh. “I don’t believe in fate. We all have our free will. Our choices determine everything.”
He puts his hand on my knee. “Well, I’m glad that both of our choices led us here.”
“In this run-down library?”
He smirks. “Yeah.”
“Am I interrupting something?” a voice asks.
We both turn to see Tobias walking toward us from a set of bookshelves had prevented us from seeing him coming. Sean removes his hand from my knee.
“No,” Sean says, standing up. “We were just discussing the other two killers in the Holy Trinity. How is Romano doing?”
“He’s good,” Tobias says, glancing between Sean and me. “I also got a text from Annette. The victim from Lauren’s apartment has been identified through his fingerprints. His name is Lucas Romaine.”
“Right,” I say, standing up. “So, if the killer is still following the Ten Commandments—and we’re still skipping over adultery—t
he next commandment says to not bear false witness against your neighbors, but in the Bible, neighbors usually means everybody on Earth. If we look into his life—”
“I already did,” Tobias interrupts. “He was an expert witness about borderline personality disorder in a criminal case where a woman was killed and this man with borderline personality disorder was charged with the murder. That person got life in prison because he told the jury that someone with borderline personality disorder was similar to a sociopath. Since the case, several psychologists have come out against his statement, saying it’s completely false. That doesn’t help our case though because the trial was in the newspapers and news websites, along with accusations of Romaine lying about this mental illness.”
“It doesn’t help our case, but this means there’s only one commandment left—do not covet,” I say.
“So are we looking for another thief?” he asks. “We already found one of those, crucified and dead.”
“No, this last commandment is different from the commandment that says to not steal,” I tell him. “In this commandment, it’s talking about people who desire things that already belong to somebody else. That will make it incredibly difficult to figure out who his next victim will be. I mean, it was nearly impossible before, because people break the Ten Commandments all of the time, but this tenth one has to do with a person’s thoughts instead of their actions. It will be nearly impossible to find them before the killer crucifies them.”
“Well, we could focus on finding where this killer is doing his crucifixions. Mary had her grandparent’s barn and Lush had the abandoned auto factory. But without a suspect, it will be damn near impossible to find where he’s killing,” he says. “Which is a slightly higher chance than finding his next victim.”
“I have an idea,” I say. “But it will take a lot of time and it probably won’t work.”
Tobias shrugs. “It’s better than nothing.”
“I thought you said hoping was worse than doing nothing,” I say.
Vengeance of the Son (A Trinity of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 3) Page 3
